When Did Sam Mendes Earn the Right to Direct Four Beatles Biopics?
variety.comOwen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic If you told me there was a plan in place to make four Beatles biopics — one each about John, Paul, George, and Ringo — and that they were going to be directed by Richard Linklater, I’d be suffused with curiosity and excitement.
If you told me that those same four movies were going to be directed by Martin Scorsese, I’d be suffused with curiosity and excitement.
If you told me that a quartet of Beatles biopics were going to be directed (one apiece) by Linklater, Scorsese, Greta Gerwig, and Todd Haynes, I’d be suffused with curiosity and excitement — and, in fact, that last option would make a beautiful kind of sense. (Offhand, I’d say Linklater should do Paul, Haynes should do John, Scorsese should do George, and Gerwig should do Ringo.) When you think about it, why would anyone — even Scorsese, the poet of rock-operatic drama — want to direct all four Beatles biopics?
Talk about hogging the spoils. But Sam Mendes does. According to a master plan handed down on stone tablets by…I’m not sure who, but the plan is in place, there will indeed be a quartet of Beatles biopics, and all four will be made by the director of “American Beauty,” “Road to Perdition,” “Revolutionary Road,” “1917,” “Empire of Light,” and several other films that I’m far from alone in not being all that crazy about.
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