Fab or not-so-fab?

Do we need another biopic of The Beatles? More to the point do we need another four, with the same cast and director but each film focussing on a different band member?

‘No’ is the answer as far as author Hunter Davies is concerned. He’s still the only person to have written an authorised biography of The Beatles during their career. His came out in 1968, two years before the group’s demise, and saw him chart their early years on the Hamburg circuit and their rise to world-conquering fame He even managed a deep dive into their respective backgrounds by tracking down Ringo Starr’s biological father (he was working as a window cleaner in Crewe) and interviewing John Lennon’s dad as he served tea at a roadside café.

Davies was speaking on BBC Radio Four last week following the news we didn’t know we had been waiting for – the identities of the actors who will play The Beatles in the four-part film series Bond director Sam Mendes announced last February. In Tinsel Town parlance it’s called a cast reveal, but curiously this one came not at a 1960s-themed press event on Abbey Road or Penny Lane but at that home-from-home for superhero movie franchise über-nerds – the ComicCon gathering in Las Vegas.

I remember talking to Mendes at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, back when that event could still draw in the heavy hitters. It was just before he picked up director duties on the Bond franchise reboot. He struck me as a finger-on-the-pulse sort of guy – he was damning about the prospects of 3D cinema, then having one of its periodic resurgences. “We already have it,” he said. “It’s called theatre” – so it’s worth........

© Herald Scotland