Beatles biopic ‘Abbey Road’ filming took over a London crossing, with Paul Mescal, Barry Keoghan, Joseph Quinn and Harris Dickinson recreating the band’s 1969 album cover in pictures published on Sunday, 16 August 2026.
The four actors were photographed stepping across the zebra crossing outside the old Abbey Road studios, the same strip of tarmac the Beatles walked for that sleeve, as reported by TMZ.
The shoot forms part of Sam Mendes’ film project on the group.
Beatles biopic ‘Abbey Road’ shoot took over the crossing
Production did not do this quietly. Around 80 extras were brought in, along with vintage vehicles to dress the road back to the late sixties, and the courtyard outside the original EMI Studios building was folded into the setup as well.
If you have ever watched a tourist try to get that photo on the real crossing, you will know how briefly it stays clear. Closing the road, filling it with period cars and walking four actors across it in formation takes rather more planning than a snapshot.
The 1969 sleeve is the reason that stretch of road became a pilgrimage site. Four men walking in single file out of a studio session turned into one of the most copied photographs in music, and the crossing has been pulling visitors with cameras ever since.
Recreating the cover also says something about the scale Mendes is working at. Rather than staging a lookalike street somewhere cheaper, the production booked the real crossing, in the real city, with the original studio building standing behind the actors.
Who is playing which Beatle in the Mendes films
The films sit under the title The Beatles, A Four Film Cinematic Event, four separate but interconnected pictures, each told from one band member’s perspective, with Mendes directing every one of them. It is an unusual way to build a biopic.
Dickinson takes John Lennon, Mescal takes Paul McCartney, Quinn takes George Harrison and Keoghan takes Ringo Starr. All four films are due in cinemas on the same day, Friday, 7 April 2028, which means audiences are being asked to sit through a complete set.
Releasing four titles on a single date is not how studios usually operate. The plan asks a viewer to buy four tickets rather than one, and to follow a story that only fully assembles once every perspective has been watched.
Starr has already signed off on the man playing him. In an interview published on Tuesday, 7 July 2026, weeks before this shoot and without having seen any of it, the drummer said he was confident Keoghan would do him justice, summing the casting up in three words:
“in good hands.”
What comes after the Beatles biopic Abbey Road shoot
More London sightings are likely while Mendes finishes this stretch of production, and the shoot has already shown how literally he intends to treat the band’s landmarks.
The date that matters remains Friday, 7 April 2028, when all four films arrive together and audiences decide whether one band’s story told four ways holds up.
