Barry Keoghan as John Lennon? Who Sam Mendes should cast in his Beatles movies

Following the news that Mendes will direct four fab films about the Fab Four, our critic picks his fantasy lineup

Just when we were getting sick of the Marvel Cinematic Universe … Sam Mendes comes along with the Beatles Cinematic Universe. It’s a quartet of interlocking movies about the Fab Four, each centred on one band member, and with the fascinating promise of overlaps and POV shifts, perhaps inspired by Lucas Belvaux’s triple-decker Trilogy pictures or Joao Canijo’s mirror image films Bad Living and Living Bad. Mendes’s moptop movies may tag quadrilaterally around key moments … Shea Stadium, the Maureen Cleave interview, Lennon’s death? But who to cast? Here is my fantasy lineup.