Paul McCartney texted Sam Mendes that Paul Mescal looks too short next to the other Beatles

Paul McCartney has one note on Sam Mendes's Beatles films: his on-screen self is too short. On Amy Poehler's Good Hang podcast, McCartney said Paul Mescal looks "markedly smaller" than the actors around him, including Harris Dickinson, who plays John Lennon. "He's smaller than the guy who's playing John," he said.

He says he raised it with Mendes before, and again after seeing a still from the Abbey Road shoot. "Sam! Smaller! Don't do this! You said you wouldn't do it," he texted.

The Abbey Road photo

According to Deadline, McCartney's concerns got worse after the cast recreated the cover of the 1969 album Abbey Road while filming in London in August. Mendes sent him a still from the crossing. "The Paul character is markedly smaller," McCartney said.

Mendes's reply, as McCartney tells it: "No, it's ok. It's just the stride." He then sent another picture, in which the four were equal. McCartney said he does not know how Mendes is "gonna deal with it".

A crossing the production was not supposed to get

The Abbey Road shoot itself was not a given. Wikipedia notes earlier reports that the production had not been granted permission to film at the location, because of concerns about closing the road.

It got there anyway. In August 2026, filming took place at Abbey Road for a scene with more than 80 extras and vintage vehicles, and on August 16 Dickinson, Mescal, Joseph Quinn and Barry Keoghan were filmed recreating the album cover at the zebra crossing outside Abbey Road Studios.

"Last February", two years late

Deadline's article says that "last February" it revealed that Mendes would direct all four films. Written in October 2026, that would mean February 2026.

The deal is older. According to Wikipedia, Sony Pictures and Mendes's Neal Street Productions had finished the agreement for four distinct films, one per Beatle, by February 2024. By March 2025, the four leads were confirmed, and filming had begun by November 2025.

The four films

• Director: Sam Mendes, on all four.
• Writers: Jez Butterworth, Peter Straughan and Jack Thorne.
• Studio: Columbia Pictures, with Neal Street Productions and Apple Corps.
• Structure: each film tells the band's story from one member's point of view, and the films connect.
• Release: all four throughout April 2028.
• Crew: cinematographer Greig Fraser, editor Lee Smith, costume designer Sinead Kidao.

The cast around the Beatles

• The band: Harris Dickinson (John Lennon), Paul Mescal (Paul McCartney), Joseph Quinn (George Harrison), Barry Keoghan (Ringo Starr).
• The partners: Saoirse Ronan as Linda McCartney, Anna Sawai as Yoko Ono, Aimee Lou Wood as Pattie Boyd, Mia McKenna-Bruce as Maureen Starkey.
• The manager: James Norton as Brian Epstein.

A shoot that covers a decade and a continent

Wikipedia's production timeline shows how much of the band's history is being rebuilt:

• February 2026: the band's arrival in New York for The Ed Sullivan Show, filmed in London.
• March: Mescal and Keoghan in Liverpool.
• May to June: all four in Barcelona and Salou, Spain, plus a yacht scene recreating a 1964 holiday taken by McCartney and Starr.
• August: Abbey Road.
• September: the opening scene of A Hard Day's Night, and on September 30, the band's 1967 visit to Bangor, North Wales.

Ringo Starr has visited the set. Mescal said in January that he would be doing his own singing, and that filming would be "my job for all of 2026".

Four films, one shoot

The films are being made back to back. Production was originally set to begin by mid-2025, and in March 2025 Mendes said it would take him more than a year to shoot all four. In January 2026, Sony released the first images of each lead in character, on postcards handed out at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, among other places.

The supporting cast has kept growing during the shoot: Harry Lloyd joined in November 2025. Anna Sawai has said she prepared for Yoko Ono by consuming media related to and made by the artist, and hopes the films will clear up public misconceptions and share Ono's perspective.

What is still unknown

• How Mendes will "deal with it". McCartney does not know, and Mendes has said only that it was the stride.
• The release dates within April 2028 for each film.
• The order of the films, and whose point of view comes first.
• When filming ends. Mescal expects it to take the whole of 2026.

The production recreated the Abbey Road crossing, a 1964 yacht trip and a scene from A Hard Day's Night. The one detail McCartney wants fixed is how tall he was.