4 movies. 4 leads. How might Sony handle the Oscars campaign for Sam Mendes’s unprecedented quartet of Beatles movies

It’s never too early to think about next year’s Oscars, but what about the Oscars four years from now? On Monday night, Sony closed out its CinemaCon presentation by announcing the main cast for Sam Mendes’s unprecedented tetralogy about the Beatles. Called The Beatles — A Four-Film Cinematic Event, the features will star Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison, and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr. In a further gambit of experimentation, all four movies will debut within the same month, April 2028. Although Sony didn’t reveal its specific release plans, Mendes and Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group chair Tom Rothman called the films the "first bingeable theatrical experience."

"Each one is told from the distinct perspective of just one of the guys," Mendes said of his plans for the movies, which the Oscar-winning director said would be in production for at least a year. "They intersect in different ways, sometimes overlapping, sometimes not. They are four very different human beings. Perhaps this is a chance to understand them a little more deeply. But together, all four films will tell the story of the greatest band in history."

It’s doubtful few movies will be as scrutinized over the next few years as The Beatles — Rothman compared the scope of the project to his work with James Cameron on the original Avatar — and even with its spring release plans, if the movie(s) hit with audiences and critics, the unparalleled gambit might also find favor with the Academy. So before a frame of footage is even shot, and years before The Beatles movies become genuine contenders, let’s handicap its Oscar potential.

The actors

The one thing we know about the project is that each band member will have their own standalone movie, so Mescal, Dickinson, Quinn, and Keoghan will presumably contend against each other for Best Actor. However, based on the band's history, Mescal and Dickinson seem like the most likely contenders. Mescal is a past Best Actor nominee for Aftersun and scored some nascent Oscar buzz for his performance in Gladiator II — at least before pundits and critics had a chance to see the movie. He’s also an early contender this year for the upcoming movie Hamnet from Chloé Zhao (Focus Features will release that film and is expected to reveal more details about it during CinemaCon later this week). Dickinson is arguably less well known than Mescal. However, his body of work over the past few years is notable. He starred in Triangle of Sadness, a Palme d’Or winner and Best Picture nominee, and had significant roles in the A24 projects The Iron Claw and Babygirl. He’s also a two-time BAFTA nominee, landing a Rising Star bid (the winner of that category is voted on by the public) and a BAFTA TV and Crafts nomination for A Murder at the End of the World. Actors playing musicians is a quick way to earn recognition from the Academy. McCartney and Lennon are near the top of the list of iconic performers alongside folks like Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, and Freddie Mercury; the three actors who played those latter legends landed subsequent Oscar bids.

However, with four movies, anything is really on the table. For argument’s sake — sight unseen with no footage even shot — what if Mescal is at his best as a supporting actor in the Harrison movie? Or does Keoghan — who, like Mescal, is a past Oscar nominee — bring unexpected depth and gravitas to Starr, so much so that Academy members take note? Or is Dickinson such a breakout that he pulls a supporting bid for the Harrison project instead of a lead nomination for his own? Or is The Beatles such a sensation that one of the actors lands two nominations in lead and supporting roles? These unanswerable questions will go unanswered for years.

The simplest path is for the studio to campaign all four in lead for their respective films. Some awards shows, like the Screen Actors Guild Awards, require submissions in specific categories, meaning if the actors are only submitted in lead for their main films, voters cannot vote for them in supporting for any of the other three. But the Oscars do not require category submissions, so Academy voters are free to vote for actors anywhere they want — and in this case, for any of the four films they want. The Oscars do have a rule prohibiting actors from being nominated more than once in the same category, though.

The filmmaker and the crafts

Mendes won an Oscar for his debut movie, American Beauty, and was nominated again for 1917. His other projects have always generated at least a bit of Oscar buzz, whether that’s Road to Perdition (six nominations and a win for cinematography), Skyfall (five nominations and wins for original song and sound), or Revolutionary Road (three nominations). So, let's put him into the conversation if only because he has four chances to succeed with the Academy instead of just one. It depends on which of the four movies is the most creatively successful.

That "depends" also qualifies for the eventual crafts team Mendes assembles to tell these stories. Last year, before it was pulled from the release calendar, Warner Bros. was in a similar boat with the two-part Horizon project, where Kevin Costner's crafts team had to pick which project to campaign. For The Beatles, a similar strategy will likely have to be implemented.

The music

The Beatles are previous Oscar winners for 1970’s Let It Be. Although the group’s classic music catalog wouldn’t be eligible for future recognition, it’s always possible McCartney or Starr (or both) produce something new for the movie. McCartney has been nominated twice away from the Beatles, for the James Bond theme “Live and Let Die” from 1973’s Live and Let Die and for “Vanilla Sky” from 2001’s Vanilla Sky. Or maybe the Beatles have another “Now and Then” in the archives. The 2023 song, billed as “the last Beatles song,” was produced with the help of AI from an unfinished demo recorded by Lennon and completed by McCartney and Starr, and later won a Grammy for Best Rock Performance.