Ridley Scott spilled the beans on Paul Mescal’s next project, and it won’t be with him.

Scott, speaking with fellow director Christopher Nolan at a screening of Gladiator II at the Director’s Guild of American on Tuesday, told the assembled crowd the his next feature will be a thriller called The Dog Stars. But when he spoke about the casting, he let it slip that he may not be able to cast star Paul Mescal in a lead role as planned.

Scott, explaining Mescal’s busy schedule, told Nolan that “Paul is actually stacked up, doing the Beatles next. So I may have to let him go.”

By “doing the Beatles.” Scott is referring to the Sam Mendes-directed series Beatles biopics for Sony Pictures. Each film will focus on an individual member of the band — Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr — with each story told through one band member’s perspective while the overarching story tells the history of the band.

Mescal as McCartney has only been an unsubstantiated rumor thus far, though as rumors go, it’s been deemed likely that Paul M. the actor will play Paul M. the Beatle. Also from the rumor mill, Harris Dickinson could be playing Lennon, Barry Keoghan was to portray Starr and Charlie Rowe would play Harrison. Keoghan’s putative casting was given an extra measure of veracity by Ringo himself, who said  he thought the Irish actor was “somewhere taking drum lessons, and I hope not too many.”

Mescal has been busy this year; in addition to Gladiator II, he has two movies in the can due out next year: starring in The History of Sound with Josh O’Connor, and in Hamnet with Jessie Buckley.