Harris Dickinson is not ready to confirm whether or not he is playing John Lennon.
Dickinson, 28, briefly touched on the rumors that he will portray Lennon in Sam Mendes’ in-the-works four Beatles movies during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published Wednesday, Jan. 29.
The outlet noted that Dickinson — who is not yet confirmed to be playing Lennon — groaned and said, “Don’t ask me about that,” when the subject was nearly broached during one conversation.
“Okay, my comment is that I think it would be a brilliant opportunity to play John Lennon, and to work with Sam and everyone else mentioned,” he said during a follow-up interview, per THR. “Yeah, I don’t know. It would be splendid.”
Skyfall and 1917 director Mendes, 59, announced that he will direct four movies about the Beatles alongside Sony Pictures and Neal Street Productions back in February 2024. The four films, which will tell the story of the Beatles, including Lennon, who died in 1980 at 1940, as well as his bandmates Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr through each band member’s perspective.
Though casting for each of the band’s four members has not yet been announced, Dickinson is rumored to costar in the four movies along with Paul Mescal as McCartney, now 82; Barry Keoghan as Starr, now 84; and either Joseph Quinn or Charlie Rowe as Harrison, who died at 58 in 2001.
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Director Ridley Scott seemingly spilled the rumored news about Mescal during a December 2024 conversation with director Christopher Nolan after a Gladiator II screening, and Starr said he believed Keoghan was “somewhere taking drum lessons” during an interview with Entertainment Tonight the same month.
A press release regarding the films’ announcement in February 2024 indicated that each of the four movies expect to release worldwide in 2027.
While the Beatles have been portrayed onscreen before — Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Thomas Brodie-Sangster portrayed teenaged versions of Lennon and McCartney in 2009’s Nowhere Boy, and Jacob Fortune-Lloyd recently starred as the band’s manager Brian Epstein in Midas Man — Mendes’ project is the first time Apple Corps Ltd. and The Beatles have granted the rights to their life stories and music for a feature length film.
“I’m honored to be telling the story of the greatest rock band of all time, and excited to challenge the notion of what constitutes a trip to the movies,” Mendes said in his February 2024 statement regarding the films.
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