Happy Valley star James Norton is being lined up to play Beatles manager Brian Epstein in the four-film Sam Mendes biopic of the band, it has been reported.
According to Deadline, Norton is to play Epstein, who discovered the Beatles in 1961 and acted as their manager until his death in 1967. No details have been officially released, and Hollywood studio Sony, which is producing the films, did not comment.
Mendes’ ambitious project, comprising four individual films each focusing on a different member of the band, was announced in 2024, and details have been gradually released since.
With a release date planned for 2028, Mendes said the films will tell interconnected stories, and it is the first time that the Beatles’ rights holders Apple have granted full life story and music rights for a scripted film.
In April 2025, the four actors playing the Beatles were presented on stage at CinemaCon in Las Vegas – Paul Mescal (Paul McCartney), Harris Dickinson (John Lennon), Barry Keoghan (Ringo Starr) and Joseph Quinn (George Harrison). In May it was revealed that Mendes had hired three writers – Jez Butterworth, Peter Straughan and Jack Thorne – to work on the scripts. It was reported in October that Saoirse Ronan is to play Linda McCartney, who was married to Paul McCartney from 1969 to her death in 1998.
Epstein has been portrayed on film a number of times in the past, including by David Angus in the 1991 film The Hours and Times, Ed Stoppard in the 2014 ITV miniseries Cilla, about Cilla Black, and by Jacob Fortune-Lloyd in the 2024 biopic Midas Man.
