Beatles Films 2028: Four Films, Eight Leads, and 13 Releases From 1963 to 1970
The Beatles films 2028 are four Sam Mendes features, one per band member, all opening in April 2028. The recording career they dramatise runs to 13 releases between March 1963 and May 1970. My Beatles discography map draws that run as stations, with the credited musicians who played on them as named tube lines.
At a glance: Sam Mendes is making four interconnected Beatles films, one from each band member's perspective, all opening in April 2028. The recording career they cover is the same 13 releases plotted on my Beatles discography tube map, from Please Please Me in March 1963 to Let It Be in May 1970, with 139 credited lines running through them and Magical Mystery Tour the busiest station at 74. Researched and designed by Mike Bell at mikebellmaps.com.
The 13 Beatles releases on the map, March 1963 to May 1970
- Please Please Me, 22 March 1963
- With the Beatles, 22 November 1963
- A Hard Day's Night, 10 July 1964
- Beatles for Sale, 4 December 1964
- Help!, 6 August 1965
- Rubber Soul, 3 December 1965
- Revolver, 5 August 1966
- Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, 26 May 1967
- Magical Mystery Tour, 27 November 1967
- The Beatles (The White Album), 22 November 1968
- Yellow Submarine, 13 January 1969
- Abbey Road, 26 September 1969
- Let It Be, 8 May 1970
A note on scope, because it matters if you are counting. Eleven of the thirteen are studio albums: Magical Mystery Tour was issued in the UK as a double EP and Yellow Submarine is a soundtrack, so the map carries 13 releases rather than 13 studio albums. Live albums and compilations are not on it.
The four films and who plays each Beatle
Four films, four perspectives, one for each member of the band. Harris Dickinson plays John Lennon, Paul Mescal plays Paul McCartney, Joseph Quinn plays George Harrison and Barry Keoghan plays Ringo Starr.
The four leading women are cast as partners who were inside the story rather than beside it. Saoirse Ronan plays Linda Eastman, the photographer who met Paul in 1967 and later played keyboards in Wings. Anna Sawai plays Yoko Ono, whom Lennon met at a London exhibition of her work in 1966. Mia McKenna-Bruce plays Maureen Cox, who met Ringo at the Cavern Club in 1962. Aimee Lou Wood plays Pattie Boyd, who met George on the set of A Hard Day's Night in 1964.
Where the recording career gets crowded, and where it empties out
I built this map from a grid of 139 credited lines against the 13 releases, one row per musician, one column per record. What the grid shows, and no four-film narrative will, is how violently the density of the band's recording work swings. The four busiest and four thinnest stations:
| Release | Year | Credited lines |
|---|---|---|
| Magical Mystery Tour | 1967 | 74 |
| Revolver | 1966 | 26 |
| Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band | 1967 | 21 |
| Let It Be | 1970 | 10 |
| With the Beatles | 1963 | 5 |
| A Hard Day's Night | 1964 | 5 |
| Beatles for Sale | 1964 | 5 |
| Yellow Submarine | 1969 | 5 |
Those four thinnest stations are the same thing four times over: the four Beatles and George Martin, and nobody else. Three of them fall inside the touring years the films will spend their Beatlemania stretch on. A band playing two hundred nights a year has no time to bring anyone else into a studio.
Magical Mystery Tour carries 74 credited lines, more than Sgt. Pepper and Revolver together
This is the fact I would put in front of anyone going to see these films. Magical Mystery Tour, November 1967, carries 74 credited lines. Sgt. Pepper, six months earlier and the record everyone reaches for as the studio-innovation landmark, carries 21. Revolver carries 26. Magical Mystery Tour carries more than the two of them together.
That is what retirement from touring actually did, and it is the sort of thing you see in an afternoon with the grid open and never in a chronological list. The Revolver column alone brings in Alan Civil on French horn, Anil Bhagwat on tabla, Alan Branscombe on tenor saxophone in the horn section George Martin arranged with Paul McCartney, and the eight-piece string section on "Eleanor Rigby", all eight named: Tony Gilbert, Sidney Sax, John Sharpe, Jurgen Hess, Stephen Shingles, John Underwood, Derek Simpson and Norman Jones.
The five lines that run the whole way, and the 115 that touch one record
Five lines run unbroken across all 13 stations: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and George Martin. Martin earns his line the way the other four do, on credited musical input rather than the production role: piano on "Misery" in 1963, harmonium on "The Word", Hammond organ on "Got to Get You into My Life" and the string and brass arrangements on "Let It Be".
Against those five, 115 of the 139 lines touch a single record and appear as branch lines. Mal Evans is the longest line after the five constants, six stations from Rubber Soul in 1965 to Abbey Road in 1969, credited on the anvil on "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and the trumpet on "Helter Skelter". Neil Aspinall runs three, Revolver to Magical Mystery Tour. Andy White appears once, on Please Please Me, and John Scott once, on Help!. Five long lines and a cloud of single-station branches is the whole band drawn in one image.
What the map adds that the four films will not have room for
Mendes has published no breakdown, so this is my reading rather than anything announced: experimentation and activism in John's film, songwriting and leadership friction in Paul's, Eastern philosophy in George's, the view from behind the kit in Ringo's. What none of them will have room for is the cast list. The late records pull in Billy Preston, whose two stations are the only consecutive pair among the seventeen lines that touch exactly two records. You can follow the same widening-circle pattern through the Rolling Stones discography art print and the David Bowie discography art print, which is held in the permanent collection at the V&A David Bowie Centre in London.
Sizes and print detail for the Beatles discography art print
The Beatles discography art print is a museum-quality Giclée on 230gsm premium fine art paper, textured matte and archival acid-free. It is produced in A1 only, 841 x 594 mm (33 x 23 in), because the density of the credits needs the larger sheet, with a 36 x 24 in format sold alongside it as a separate size. Both come unframed at £65 or ready to hang in a black wood frame at £175. There is also a black edition of the Beatles discography art print, on the same A1 only basis.
The Beatles Discography Tube Map
13 releases, 1963 to 1970, with 139 credited lines running through them. Not an algorithm - every connection on this map was made by hand, by an obsessive fan.
The Beatles discography art printRelated Beatles maps and research
For the recording career on its own terms, start with the Beatles albums in order. For the players behind the five constant lines, beatles session musicians goes through the grid name by name. All 70 maps sit in the music wall art prints collection.
Beatles films 2028: questions I get asked
When are the Beatles films released?
All four Sam Mendes Beatles films open in April 2028, as four interconnected features rather than one biopic, each told from a different band member's perspective.
Who plays the Beatles in the Sam Mendes films?
Harris Dickinson plays John Lennon, Paul Mescal plays Paul McCartney, Joseph Quinn plays George Harrison and Barry Keoghan plays Ringo Starr. Saoirse Ronan, Anna Sawai, Mia McKenna-Bruce and Aimee Lou Wood play Linda McCartney, Yoko Ono, Maureen Starkey and Pattie Boyd.
How many Beatles albums did the band make?
The Beatles made eleven UK studio albums between 1963 and 1970. My map carries 13 stations because it also takes in the Magical Mystery Tour double EP and the Yellow Submarine soundtrack, opening with Please Please Me in March 1963 and closing with Let It Be in May 1970.
Which Beatles record has the most credited musicians?
Magical Mystery Tour, with 74 credited lines. That is more than Sgt. Pepper's 21 and Revolver's 26 added together, and it is the clearest thing on the print.
What is not on the Beatles discography map?
Live albums, compilations and non-album singles are not on it. "Hey Jude", the Past Masters collections and the Anthology sets all sit outside the map, along with anything released after the artwork was drawn.
Watching the films, reading the credits
The films will dramatise the relationships. The map draws them. What struck me researching this one is how much of the story is in the arithmetic: five people on four records in a row, then seventy-four on one in 1967. If you are buying for someone who will be in the cinema in April 2028 and you are not sure which map they would want, the gift card for music fans lets them pick it themselves.