Sam Mendes is not the only one making a Beatles biopic.
For months, Hollywood has been buzzing about the forthcoming quartet of films from the Oscar-winning director, each focusing on a different member of the Fab Four.
Released in theatres in 2028 and billed as a “Cinematic Event”, the blockbuster project features a starry cast of Paul Mescal, Harris Dickinson, Barry Keoughan, and Joseph Quinn.
With the backing of Apple Corps, Mendes also crucially has permission to include Beatles tracks such as “Hey Jude” and “Let It Be”.
Fewer people will have heard about Hamburg Day, a six-part German drama airing on the BBC that will chronicle the early days of the band as they played the smoke-filled clubs of the German city.
Featuring a cast of complete unknowns and relying on Beatles’ covers of artists including Bobby Scott, Consuelo Velasquez and Ric Marlow, Hamburg Day will look at a period of the band’s career that has “hardly been celebrated” – and its producers know that they’re backing the underdog in a battle with Mendes’ star-studded films.
“We are the David to their Goliath but we are trying to tell a very different story,” producer Andrew Eaton told The Times. “Ours is about before they became famous and they have access to all the Beatles songs and we have to use non-Beatles songs. They will hopefully complement each other.”
Set in the early Sixties, Hamburg Days will portray the young band from Liverpool, including drummer Pete Best and bassist Stuart Sutcliffe, as they learnt the ropes of the music industry by playing six-hour residencies in Hamburg’s St Pauli red-light district.
The series hopes to shed light on an under-explored but vital time in the lives of the Beatles.
“John Lennon once said: ‘I was born in Liverpool but I grew up in Hamburg,’” Eaton told the publication. “So we were interested in telling the story as if it was a band that no one had ever heard of who were desperately trying to be successful when they were literally just kids. Their Hamburg days have hardly been celebrated at all.”
Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 day
New subscribers only. £9.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews until cancelled.
Try for free
ADVERTISEMENT. If you sign up to this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.
Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 day
New subscribers only. £9.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews until cancelled.
Try for free
ADVERTISEMENT. If you sign up to this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.
The series – which has begun filming in Hamburg, Munich and Liverpool – is based on the autobiography of Klaus Voorman, the German artist behind the artwork for the Beatles’ 1966 album Revolver.
Going up against Mendes’s all-star cast is a British group of unknown 19 to 21-year-olds: Rhys Mannion as John Lennon, Ellis Murphy as Paul McCartney, Harvey Brett as George Harrison, Louis Landau as Stuart Sutcliffe and Patrick Gilmore as Pete Best.
Having set out to prioritise casting musicians, the producers ended up with a mix of musical abilities. “Ellis, who plays Paul, is a really talented musician, but he’s right-handed so he has had to learn to play left-handed,” Eaton said. “Louis has never played bass guitar in his life and is left-handed and is having to play right-handed.”
As for the soundtrack, 21 tracks have been recorded in the basement of the Casbah Coffee Club by the Liverpool band the Savage Young Beatles.
Eaton said: “They are like a punk version of the Beatles who do all the Hamburg stuff. We were going to use older session musicians but then realised that there’s something about young bands that mean they just play in a different way.
“People say that when they heard the Beatles play in Hamburg it made the hairs stand up on the back of their necks and we want to capture that.”
The six-part series is due out on the BBC in April 2028, the same month as Mendes’s four biopics.
