Former lead singer of The Beatles, lyricist and musician Paul McCartney has been added to the cast of the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Dead Men Tell No Tales stars Johnny Depp’s rapscallion pirate Jack Sparrow in a new set of adventures that is possibly the last in the blockbuster franchise. The movie, directed by Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg, also stars Javier Bardem as the villain, while Orlando Bloom and Geoffrey Rush return as Will Turner and Captain Barbossa, respectively. The details of McCartney’s role haven’t been announced yet, and the movie will be released only on May 26, 2017. But it can safely be predicted that the ex-Beatle will be most comfortable in front of the camera, just the way he has been ever since the band burst onto the music scene in 1962.

The 73-year-old singer and songwriter made his screen debut in A Hard Day’s Night, which was released in 1964 to cash in on Beatlemania. Directed by Richard Lester and shot in a documentary style (the scenes of shrieking fans chasing McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr everywhere must surely have been very easy to stage), the comedy features the Fab Four as their irreverent and adventurous selves. A Hard Day’s Night was a critical and commercial hit.

The movie opens with the chart-busting titular song and follows the Beatles, who are never named in the film, on a train journey to London, where they are scheduled to perform at a concert. Paul’s grandfather accompanies the cheeky foursome on the journey, and the old man proves to be far more troublesome than the band members. Ringo goes missing and is found just in time for the concert. The soundtrack includes songs that have become Beatles standards, such as “I Feel Fine”, which is performed on the train, “I Wanna Be Your Man” and “All My Loving”, which plays in the background as the Beatles dance at a club, and “If I Fell” and “And I Love Her”, performed during practice sessions.

The Criterion DVD label restored the movie in 2014, and the audio remastering was carried out by Giles Martin, the son of the band’s legendary producer, George Martin, who died on March 8, 2016. Richard Lester directed another movie around the band in 1965. Help! was a parody of spy movies revolving around a Hindu cult that pursues drummer Ringo Starr for a magical ring that he has inadvertently come to possess.

The Fab Four were stoned during the production, write Peter Brown and Steven Gaines in The Beatles biography The Love You Make. The band was hooked after an initiation by Bob Dylan in America the previous year, and “their continuous giggling, plus their periodic trips to the dressing trailer to ‘have a laugh,’ was enough of a clue to what was going on without the sweet telltale scent of pot that followed them around”, write Brown and Gaines. The soundtrack, which included the title track, “Yesterday”, “The Night Before” and “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away”, topped the charts, but the movie was poorly received. The Beatles made a third film, Magical Mystery Tour (1967), inspired the characters in the acclaimed animated movie Yellow Submarine (1968), and appeared together for one last time in the documentary Let It Be (1969), which captured the break-up of one of the greatest quartets in musical history.