The Robert Zemeckis remake of a Beatles classic cratered by box office disaster
The Beatles and Robert Zemeckis go way back, but when there were plans afoot to reunite the ‘Fab Four’ and the filmmaker, a short-lived detour into the more experimental and boundary-pushing side of cinema came back to haunt him.
The director made his feature-length debut on 1978 comedy I Wanna Hold Your Hand that he also co-wrote alongside Back to the Future collaborator Bob Gale, which followed a group of teenagers on an increasingly desperate mission to make it to The Ed Sullivan Show in time to catch The Beatles’ historic performance that sent ‘Beatlemania’ global.
In the years to come, Zemeckis would go on to become one of the biggest directors in Hollywood after steering Romancing the Stone, the Back to the Future trilogy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump, What Lies Beneath, and Cast Away to huge success, earning himself an Academy Award for ‘Best Director’ into the bargain.
However, by the time he circled back around to The Beatles, he’d become so pre-occupied with his performance capture obsession that it ended up obliterating his plans to remake Yellow Submarine. Clearly, Zemeckis’ fandom of the band remained as strong as ever, but his desire to mount a new version of the cult favourite 1968 animated musical fell apart at the seams.
The Polar Express and Beouwulf had seen the filmmaker shift into fully CG-animated features, and it was announced in August 2009 that his ImageMovers Digital outfit would be tackling Yellow Submarine by utilising the same cutting-edge visual techniques.
A cast and crew was gathered, with Peter Serafinowicz, Dean Lennox Kelly, Cary Elwes, and Adam Campbell on board to voice Paul, John, George, and Ringo, while David Tennant would be lending his dulcet tones to the Chief Blue Meanie, and tribute act The Fab Four were hired to provide the motion capture for the quartet.
Unfortunately, it quickly became clear that audiences weren’t very interested in what ImageMovers was doing. Beouwulf under-performed, A Christmas Carol didn’t turn enough of a profit to justify its reported $200 million budget, and Mars Needs Moms ended up as one of the biggest flops in box office history that lost Disney an eye-watering amount of money.
In what absolutely wasn’t a coincidence, Disney pulled the plug on Yellow Submarine less than a week after Mars Needs Moms hit cinemas and disintegrated upon impact, with ImageMovers having already signalled its intentions to close and lay off the majority of its 450-strong staff even before the family-friendly sci-fi had tanked so spectacularly.
Zemeckis unsuccessfully pitched Yellow Submarine to other studios, none of whom showed any interest after the performance capture era had proven to be such a bust. Just like that, it was swept under the rug never to be heard from again, with the filmmaker ending heading back to conventional live-action with his tail between his legs.
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