New Yellow Submarine Movie in the works

[Soulsaman]

Anyone excited about this?

http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/i ... ne-remake/

[simer4001]

Not me.

[paologregorio]

I can't imagine the new movie being better than the original animated feature, which I thought was perfect.

In any case, given his reputation, I think Zemeckis will do a better job on the Yellow Submarine remake, than was done with the 70s Sgt. Pepperfeature, but I'm not sure that's saying much.

[doctorwho]

The image that comes to my mind is Stigwood's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band ...

[lennon211]

I heard about this about 2 months ago on Aint It Cool News. I'm pretty excited about it, but that could blow up in my face. The voice cast looks pretty solid now that they have cast the principals. I like the idea of it being a motion-capture animated film to differentiate it from the original. The one thing that I'd like to see is some sort of personal Beatles connection like there was on the original's ending...maybe even reuse that one. I have heard that it's a Beatles cover band doing music which, if true, is a major disappointment. I think that some of the people involved though will understand that they're dealing with something that's going to be scrutinzed to such a degree that anything could set off such a large fanbase in a negative way. I'd like to believe that with it being something as culturally sacred as the Beatles that it would be done in such a way to create more for Beatles fans instead of making so many cringe. I will see it, but then again, I saw the latest Indiana Jones and Star Wars movies and most of us know how those "sacred" things turned out.

[cjj]

Not me.

+1

[shamustwin]

Not to hijack the thread, but Ringo's got a new album out, the L.A. times gave it a good review. A certain lefty bassist plays on it as well.

[JakeK]

"Yellow Submarine"...not my favorite Beatles film. Good for kids, maybe, but for me, the older I got, the less impressed I was with it. Some friends of mine have only seen this, not MMT, Help! or HDN. As weird as it was, I found myself to lean towards "Magical Mystery Tour" than this. Mostly because MMT was so randomly crazy, it was brilliant.

If they have a good voice cast, they should have good music, by good music, I mean the Fab's original music, not a cover band's remakes.

[FretlessOnly]

Shame that Hey Bulldog got pulled from the original film; I've heard that it got put back in for a recent re-release, or something like that. I wonder if it will make this version. But Yellow Submarine never did much for me. Magical Mystery Tour is by far my favorite too, JK.

[Clint]

From what I read on Yahoo! news this morning, Sony & EMI have licensed the original songs for the film. Still, I think it's a bad idea. It was a moment in time, a remake will never capture that.

[beatlefreak]

Shame that Hey Bulldog got pulled from the original film; I've heard that it got put back in for a recent re-release, or something like that.

The Hey Bulldog sequence is in the recent release.

[route66guitars]

This is an example of something that wouldn't have happened while Neil Aspinall was running Apple Corps. He was slow to get projects out the door, but he had a better sense than the surviving Beatles, and now the widows and children, of what their legacy is. This is mailbox money for The Beatles. They won't be involved other than collecting a percentage.

Every fan I've talked with would much rather see the original Yellow Submarine film back in print (yes, it's out of print in the US,) with the video digitally restored, rather than a new version. The 1999 DVD release featured remixed 5.1 audio, but only a cleaned original negative without restoration, and it shows in some scenes.

The widescreen restoration of Let It Be has been delayed several times due to budget (really?), infighting over it's painting certain members in a bad light (really???), and the fortunate recovery of the audio master reels for the film shot but not used in the released motion picture.

Magical Mystery Tour is available on DVD, but the print is so poor it's unwatchable.

Help! is available on DVD, but not in Blu-Ray.

A Hard Day's Night has I nice DVD release. It's been released in Blu-Ray, but only in Canada, and it's universally considered a hack job.

How about releasing all of their films, restored, in both a DVD and Blu-Ray box set? Why doesn't this exist? This is much rarer material than the music. Look at the number of clips from Let It Be on YouTube that people think are bootleg video? There are two generations of Beatles fans that have never seen all of these films in their intended forms.

And then there are the music videos, directed by Tony Bramwell or Michael Lindsay-Hogg, shot for US and European TV. Why isn't there an official DVD of them? We know they exist in good condition, as portions of many of them appeared in Anthology, and are widely bootlegged.

Fixing all of these issues make more sense, and are more core to The Beatles legacy than a 3D motion capture version of Yellow Submarine starring Westley from Princess Bride…

Ah… I feel better now.

[lennon211]

A lot of the reason that this doesn't yet exist is because of various licensing agreements that have been made with distribution companies. Perhaps that is the reason why much of the product has been allowed to lapse into moratorium: they are waiting until they can produce a complete set with all of the materials? The newest edition of Help! was much better than the MPI edition from before. The newer Miramax edition of HDN again is better. It would have been much better handled if Miramax had handled the North American Blu-Ray. MMT was also an MPI release, however I have seen other cheaper looking versions as of late.

Regarding the release of Let It Be, there aren't many involved with the project who do look good.

Also, restoration is a very long and expensive process. It takes a great deal of time to go through frame-by-frame and remove dust which can be exhaustive depending on the condition of the print as well as color restoration depending upon the state of the color frames. While it's probably not nearly as bad as the yellow-layer deterioration on old Technicolor features, there is a tremendous amount of work and money involved to do it and do it well. If this isn't a priority for them, there may not be a willing source for producing such a restoration within the Beatles camp.

And BTW, it isn't the Beatles original recordings that are going to be sourced, according to early indications from Robert Zemekis; it's going to be a cover band.

Why not at least give it time to see how it goes? The imagery could be pretty mindblowing. It's being done with the same animation technique as the recently released A Christmas Carol with Jim Carrey from Disney. This one is also (and I know that there are a lot of people that feel very strongly about the company) a Disney-produced project. I'd mention though that a lot of people were not happy about Beatles Rock Band and wouldn't ya know, it's actually a lot of fun.

[route66guitars]

Disney announced the cast yesterday, and that they've already licensed the original recordings for the film. The cover band was hired to do the band performance motion capture. It was stated specifically that they were not hired to supply music for the film. I'll hold judgement on the film until it's released. My point is that it's not something actual fans would have ever requested. The things I listed are requested all the time.

Let It Be, the film, was originally scheduled to have a limited release to theaters and then be released on DVD at the same time that Let It Be… Naked shipped. I know all of this because I was involved with the auction of George's Rosewood Telecaster, and we were working to tie it in with the film's re-release.

According to Tony Bramwell, who directed many of them, Apple Records owns the rights to all of the promotional videos. There is no legal reason they can't be released.

[beatlefreak]

And then there are the music videos, directed by Tony Bramwell or Michael Lindsay-Hogg, shot for US and European TV. Why isn't there an official DVD of them? We know they exist in good condition, as portions of many of them appeared in Anthology, and are widely bootlegged.

This would be a release that I would be most excited about. All the promo films, cleaned up and released with a stereo soundtrack.