Adolescence writer to join Sam Mendes’s Beatles films

Jack Thorne is one of three award-winning screenwriters reported to be involved in the project so far

Weeks after the four leading cast members of Sam Mendes’s forthcoming Beatles films were announced, it has been reported that the Oscar-winning director has secured three writers to join the production.

Award-winning British writers Jez Butterworth (Edge of Tomorrow), Peter Straughan (Conclave) and Jack Thorne (Adolescence) will join the four biopics, which are expected to hit the big screen in April 2028.

Thorne may be most recognised for his hit Netflix series Adolescence, which he co-created with Stephen Graham. When it debuted on Netflix earlier this year, the series sparked global conversations around the dangers of social media on young people and landed itself top on Netflix’s 10 most-watched English series of all time. Thorne has also written the screenplay for films including Enola Holmes and The Swimmers.

In the world of TV he’s worked alongside director Shane Meadows in the 2010 drama miniseries This Is England and on the adaptation of Philip Pullman’s hit children’s novels His Dark Materials. The Olivier Award-winning playwright also wrote Harry Potter And The Cursed Child (2016) and, most recently, National Theatre’s The Motive and the Cue (2023), which was directed by Mendes.

Academy Award winner Straughan will also be joining as a screenwriter, having just won Best Adapted Screenplay for Edward Berger’s Vatican thriller Conclave, starring Ralph Fiennes, John Lithgow, Stanley Tucci and Isabella Rossellini. The Oscar-award wining film follows the secret and mysterious ritual behind the election of a new Pope.

For TV, Straughan adapted Hilary Mantel’s bestselling novel Wolf Hall. The series starred Damian Lewis and was nominated for multiple awards, winning the BAFTA for Best Drama Series in 2016. He also wrote its sequel, Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light.

Butterworth is an award-winning playwright who wrote the 2017 play The Ferryman, for which he took home the Tony for Best Play. He later wrote The Hills of California, which just received seven Tony nominations, including for best play (both were directed by Mendes).

Jack Thorne will join writing team for Beatles film (Getty Images)

For screen, Butterworth has written the scripts for James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari (2019), the James Bond film Spectre (2015), and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023).

The Beatles series will include four separate films, each focusing on a different member of the group, and stars Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison, Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr, and Harris Dickinson as John Lennon.

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Film will star Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison, Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr, and Harris Dickinson as John Lennon (Getty)

Mendes, the director behind films such as Skyfall, has been developing this unique take on the Fab Four for years, claiming that it “was too big for one film”. In creating four films, he has stated that he wishes to create the “first binge-able theatrical experience”.

This is the first time Apple, the Beatles’s record company and the two living band members, McCartney and Starr, have granted the rights to their stories and music for a scripted film.