First look at Paul Mescal, Barry Keoghan, Harris Dickinson and Joseph Quinn as The Beatles

The Fab Four are here: fans have a first look at Paul Mescal, Barry Keoghan, Harris Dickinson and Joseph Quinn in character as The Beatles.

Sam Mendes’s four films will each focus on a particular member of the band, with Mescal as Paul McCartney, Keoghan as Ringo Starr, Dickinson as John Lennon and Quinn as George Harrison.

All four films are currently scheduled for release on 7 April 2028. In a bold marketing move, studio Sony printed four different postcards – each showing the main cast in character – and dispersed them around the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts (which was co-founded by McCartney) for students to find.

“We’ve been given exclusive postcards promoting the new Beatles movies! LIPA’s official Instagram account shared on Thursday (29 January).

“We’ve hidden them around LIPA, and we want students to find them.”

Initial reactions to the images have been mixed, but comments on the LIPA post showed plenty of praise for Mescal as McCartney: “I thought that was actually Paul,” one fan wrote. “Mescal really nailed the look! Wow.”

“Paul Mescal really captures that McCartney vibe in these first-look shots,” another fan wrote on X. “Looking forward to seeing how the full cast comes together in the biopics.”

However, some continued to grumble about the casting of Quinn as Harrison, with one claiming he should be “recast immediately”.

“OK so this is John Frusciante,” another fan joked, suggesting that Quinn’s get-up better resembled the Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist.

Others urged Beatles fans to wait until the films were actually released, in order to see how each actor would depict their respective Beatle onscreen.

Production has begun on the four films, whose central quartet comprise some of the most in-demand actors of their generation. It also marks the first time scripted movies have been granted The Beatles’ life and music rights.

Mescal and co will be joined by Saoirse Ronan as Linda McCartney, James Norton as Brian Epstein, Anna Sawai as Yoko Ono, Aimee Lou Wood as Pattie Boyd, Harry Lloyd as George Martin and Mia McKenna-Bruce as Maureen Starkey.

Last year, Mendes explained why he wanted to make four films, one about each Beatle, comparing it to his BBC2 documentary about the Second World War.

“As a film-maker, one is always looking to find new ways to look at the past. To turn historical events so they catch the light in new and different ways. My film 1917 was an attempt to do this,” he wrote in The Times.

“The Beatles films we are making now also fall into this category. And here again I felt the same portal to the past had been opened.”