Having won our hearts as misfit rocker Eddie Munson in Stranger Things back in 2022, Joseph Quinn has gone from strength to strength. This year alone, the London born actor has lit up our screens in the likes of Hoard, A Quiet Place: Day One, and, most recently, Ridley Scott’s swords-and-sandals sequel Gladiator II. And by the sound of it, Quinn may not be done working with his Gladiator co-star Paul Mescal just yet. Yes, just a day after we learned that Mescal is set to play Paul McCartney in Sam Mendes’ upcoming quartet of Beatles biopics, tonight Deadline are reporting that Quinn will be picking up his axe (guitar axe, that is) once again to play George Harrison alongside him.
Now sadly, this bit of casting for Mendes’ Fab Four features isn’t quite as exciting as Ringo Starr namedropping Barry Keoghan during a Grammys interview or Ridley Scott casually dropping Mescal’s McCartney casting at an unrelated Q&A screening. Instead, this one comes from Deadline‘s ‘The Dish’ column — so, as ever, keep your salt within pinchable range as you read on. According to the trade’s European sources, Quinn has been spotted carrying a guitar about while on the set of The Fantastic Four: First Steps. And while that may sound a little wishy-washy on the face of it, given the fact whispers have been swirling for months now about Keoghan, Mescal, Quinn, and Harris Dickinson being the chosen ones to play Liverpool’s prodigal sons and two of them have already been put in the frame by legitimate sources, it’s very likely Quinn is aboard. We wouldn’t be surprised if someone says something about Dickinson’s John Lennon casting before the week’s through. Who knows, maybe his Babygirl co-star Nicole Kidman will let slip that she heard Dickinson singing ‘Imagine’ between takes?
As for this Quinn casting, it’d be a nice bit of poetry for the actor who made his name with a badass musical moment in Stranger Things — and who has since gone on to shred live with actual Metallica — to get the chance to play a bona fide music icon in a series of films about the biggest band of all time. And with Mendes’ movies set to release consecutively throughout 2027, he and his cast will surely be working Eight Days A Week and through many a Hard Day’s Night to get their take on the Fab Four firing on all cylinders. To which all we can say is, well, please, please us!