Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Beatles drama Hamburg Days begins filming in Germany as a wave of new Beatles projects builds
BBC’s Hamburg Days has started filming in Merseyside and Munich, joining a busy new era of Beatles screen projects.
Filming is officially underway on Hamburg Days, the BBC’s upcoming six-part Beatles drama about the group’s formative years in Hamburg before the world knew their name. Production has started in Merseyside and Munich, putting the series into motion as interest in Beatles screen projects keeps snowballing.
The series comes from Succession writer Jamie Carragher and is directed by Christian Schwochow, known for The Crown, and Laura Lackmann of Call My Agent Berlin. Its story is rooted in Klaus Voormann’s autobiography and is set inside the “smoke-filled clubs of Hamburg’s St. Pauli’s red-light district,” where the young Liverpool band began sharpening what would become a defining sound and stage identity.
The cast lines up the key names from that era: Rhys Mannion as John Lennon, Ellis Murphy as Paul McCartney, Harvey Brett as George Harrison, Louis Landau as Stuart Sutcliffe, and Patrick Gilmore as Pete Best. Luna Jordan plays Astrid Kirchherr, Laura Tonke appears as her mother Nielsa, and Casper von Bülow takes on Klaus Voormann, with Lasse Klene as Jürgen Vollmer.
The series synopsis frames the story around that collision between a “young rock ‘n’ roll band from Liverpool” and two artists, Voormann and Kirchherr, whose presence helps push the group toward something far bigger. According to the show, that meeting helps transform “a scrappy group of teenagers into the greatest music phenomenon the world has ever known: The Beatles.”
Sue Deeks, Head of Scripted Pre-buy Acquisitions at the BBC, previously described the project as “the fascinating story of how, in the space of two short years, a raw young band from Liverpool honed their music skills in Hamburg, before returning home to become an overnight worldwide success.” She added, “It is an incredible story, accompanied (of course) by an amazing soundtrack!”
Hamburg Days arrives amid a wider rush of Beatles film and TV projects. Sam Mendes is also directing four standalone Beatles films, due in cinemas in 2028, with Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison, and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr. The cast also includes Saoirse Ronan as Linda McCartney, Aimee Lou Wood as Pattie Boyd, Anna Sawai as Yoko Ono, Mia McKenna-Bruce as Maureen Starkey, and James Norton as Brian Epstein.
Elsewhere, Steven Soderbergh is developing John Lennon: The Last Interview, a documentary that will use generative AI. And in another sign of how deep the Beatles machine still runs, 3 Savile Row, the London landmark long tied to the band, is set to open to the public next year for the first official Beatles fan experience.
That experience will give visitors access to seven floors of previously unseen material from Apple Corps’ archives, plus rotating exhibitions, a fan store, and a recreation of the original studio where Let It Be was recorded. Meanwhile, McCartney has just put out his first duet with Starr, Home To Us, which is available now.
