August may have heralded news of a brand-new Beatles Anthology release and an expanded companion documentary — after some not-so-cryptic teasing from Paul McCartney — but October brings news of even more Beatles content. McCartney has just announced a new documentary focusing on his life after the end of the Fab Four.
The doc, entitled Man on the Run, will be available to stream on Amazon Prime Video from February 25, 2026. It charts his transition from one half of the band’s prestigious songwriting partnership to forming the Wings with his wife, Linda.
“The Beatles had broken up and I was thinking, ‘What do I do now?’” he says in a newly released trailer. “How can I ever do anything that’s anywhere near as good as the Beatles? I was on my own for the first time, so I had to look inside myself.”
McCartney arguably had the toughest time leaving the band behind of any of the Fab Four. George Harrison, who’d grown frustrated by his peripheral presence in the group, had come flying out of the traps with “All Things Must Pass.” Lennon recognized how Harrison and Ringo Starr flourished as solo men, but McCartney’s post-Beatles era was a little more shaky.
It’s ironic, considering that he was the one to quash Lennon’s plans to keep the Beatles going into the 1970s, and Harrison had featured heavily in that. This documentary will explore how he navigated those uncharted waters.
As McCartney says in the trailer, McCartney was the only one of the quartet to “put a band together,” leaning into collaboration while the rest flew the nest.
“I thought we should start from square one,” he says. “It was a puzzle I had to unravel.”
“The film chronicles the arc of McCartney’s solo career as he faces down a myriad of challenges while creating new music to define a new decade,” says Amazon MGM. The film offers “unprecedented access to previously unseen footage and rare archival materials” with the story told “through a uniquely vulnerable lens.”
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It’s likely to take in McCartney’s 1973 TV Special, which proved a pivotal turning point in McCartney’s at-that-point middling solo career. Sadly, though, his idea to walk onstage dressed as Diana Ross was shut down.
It might also tackle the disintegration of the Lennon-McCartney friendship, which saw the pair write diss tracks about one another across the decade, putting many fans on the hunt for hidden meanings in their lyrics.
More interestingly, this isn’t a one-off project. It kickstarts a new working relationship between McCartney, Universal Music Group, and Amazon, with exclusive music and merch being mooted. McCartney will also release his new book, Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run, on November 4.
While promoting that book in an interview with Vulture, the acclaimed musician also shared an update on what will be his 19th solo album — his first since 2020.
“Right now, I have 25 songs that I’m finishing in the next few months, new songs that are interesting,” he says. “Often, a constant thread through my writing is nostalgia, the memories of things past. I don’t question too much how it happens. I’m just thrilled it does.”
Elsewhere, super producer Mark Ronson has given a fresh look into what it was like to work on an album with Paul McCartney, and how his penchant for “weird” sounds was always present.
Guitar Player has also pulled its historic 1990 interview with McCartney from its archives, in which he makes some surprising revelations about his favorite guitar.
