Paul Mescal, Barry Keoghan, Harris Dickinson and Joseph Quinn will star in a big-screen story about The Beatles told through four films, each from the perspective of one of the Fab Four.

Skyfall director Sam Mendes will make the films about the legendary band.

He said they would be released in April 2028, in what he describes as the first “bingeable moment in cinema”.

Mescal will play Sir Paul McCartney, Keoghan will play Ringo Starr, Dickinson will portray the late John Lennon, and Quinn is on board as the late George Harrison.

Speaking at Sony’s CinemaCon presentation in Las Vegas on Monday, Mendes said it would take him more than a year to shoot all four movies. He did not revealed their release order.

The 59-year-old director hailed The Beatles as possibly the “most significant band of all time” who had “redefined the culture and stayed with you for a lifetime”.

Mendes said he had dreamed of the project for a long time.

“I had been trying to do a film for years, but I finally gave up [because the] story was too big for one film,” he said.

Noting a TV series did not seem quite right, he said: “There had to be a way to tell the epic story for a new generation … I can assure you there is still plenty left to explore and I think we found a way to do that.”

Assembled together for the first time, the four actors then quoted Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as they told the audience in Las Vegas: “It’s wonderful to be here, it’s certainly a thrill, you’re such a lovely audience, we’d like to take you home with us.”

Ridley Scott had previously let slip that Mescal would star in the films, while Starr himself had teased Keoghan had been cast as him.

“I’m excited that [Mendes] has taken the madness of making four movies at the same time,” Starr recently told People magazine.

“My life as a lad, John’s life, Paul’s life, George’s life, I mean, it must interact in some way.

“There’ll be Beatles in mine around when I joined, and there’ll be Beatles in Paul’s. We’ll all be there. So I’m excited to see what he does with it.”

Dickinson and Quinn had also been linked with the project before the formal announcement.

Mendes first announced plans for the Beatles movies in 2024.

“We went out to Los Angeles just before Christmas to pitch the project, and it’s fair to say we were met with universal enthusiasm,” he told Deadline at the time.

The movies have the approval of the surviving Beatles, McCartney and Starr, and of Lennon and Harrison’s families.

It is the first time both they and rights holder Apple have granted a scripted film full-life story and music rights.

Jeff Jones, who is executive producing the films for Apple, has promised to create an “epic cinematic experience”.

-with AAP