Meet the Beatles
As conceived by Mendes, each of the four movies will be told from the perspective of one of the four Beatles. To get the full experience, the films have to be seen in concert with each other.
“The Beatles changed my understanding of music,” Mendes said of his initital inspiration for wanting to tell their story onscreen. Watching his own children delight in immortal tracks like “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Yesterday” further encouraged the director to think beyond the structure of an ordinary two-hour biopic.
Mendes and Rothman introduced the CinemaCon crowd to the cinematic Fab Four: Harris Dickinson plays John Lennon, Paul Mescal plays Paul McCartney, Barry Keoghan plays Ringo Starr, and Joseph Quinn plays George Harrison. Brought onstage, the quartet did their impression of a Beatles bow and then quoted that familiar Sgt. Pepper refrain about wanting to take the lovely audience home with them.
Production on the four movies starts in the next few months and is anticipated to last a full year. It’s the first authorized set of films to be made about the band, having gotten the official sign-off from Apple Corps Ltd. as well as McCartney and Starr and the families of Lennon and Harrison.
“All four films in proximity tell their full story in a unique way,” Rothman said.
The best around
The Beatles weren’t the only legends onstage during Sony’s CinemaCon panel. Veteran karate kid Ralph Macchio appeared alongside his protégé Ben Wang to promote Karate Kid: Legends. Before the stars took the stage, the audience was treated to an in-theater performance that loosely recreated the climax from 1986’s The Karate Kid Part II, complete with drums, paper lanterns, and sparring.
“It’s an honor to be back in theaters as Daniel LaRusso,” Macchio said after he and Wang were introduced—a tacit acknowledgement of his just-concluded stint on Cobra Kai, which originated as a YouTube Red series before moving to Netflix.
Although the show was produced by Sony’s television arm, the new film is keeping it at arm’s length. In interviews, Macchio has referred to the franchise’s film and television extensions as inhabiting “separate ecosystems.”
But Legends has clearly learned some moves from Cobra Kai, starting with its central idea of bringing two veteran teachers together to train the next generation. In addition to Macchio, the film features Jackie Chan reprising his role as Mr. Han from the 2010 Karate Kid reboot and the two martial arts mentors team up to assist Wang in training for a major tournament.
Sony is also counting on the cross-generational goodwill surrounding Cobra Kai to carry over into Legends. “It’s a true, four-quadrant all-audience crowdpleaser,” vowed Sony president Sanford Panitch.
For Daniel’s sake, let’s just hope it’s not another cruel summer.
