Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr working on 'very different' film with Get Back director Peter Jackson
22 July 2022, 12:33 | Updated: 15 January 2024, 11:47
After the enormous success of Get Back, Peter Jackson has revealed he's working on an ambitious new film.
Winning a total of five Emmys for his epic Beatles documentary, Jackson is targeting more success with another film focused on the Fab Four.
Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson has confirmed that he's currently working on the project that'd feature both Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.
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But the new film will be very different to his Disney+ documentary that offered an insight into the the beginning of the end of The Beatles.
It’s been a decade since Jackson directed the final instalment of The Hobbit, and he’s since delved fully into the world of documentaries, notably the tear-jerking WWI documentary They Shall Not Grow Old.
Off the back off Get Back’s universal acclaim and with Paul and Ringo in talks to come on board, he’s getting back to his boundary-pushing filmmaking.
Speaking in an interview with Deadline, Jackson let slip that he's "talking to The Beatles about another project, something very, very different than Get Back."
"We’re seeing what the possibilities are, but it’s another project with them. It’s not really a documentary… and that’s all I can really say…" he went on to reveal.
"We are never in a position where we have to do anything, but we’ve got a few things percolating.”
Get Back was the culmination of a pain-staking process to edit over 57 hours of video footage from the original 1970 documentary Let It Be, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg.
It was a labour of love for over four years, but clearly hasn't diminished his love of the iconic band.
But according to the Lord Of The Rings director, his new film with Macca and Ringo will test the limits of current technology. So he's developing new technology himself.
“One of them could be big scale, but it’s so technically complicated I’m trying to work how exactly I’ll do it,” Jackson said.
“It’s a live-action movie, but it needs technology that doesn’t quite exist at the moment, so we’re in the middle of developing the technology to allow it to happen. I’m trying to anticipate what I might be able to do, before it even exists."
Teasing a live-action movie using pre-existing footage will likely expand on the editing process for The Beatles' rooftop performance of 'I Got A Feeling'.
A project born of pure fandom, Jackson isolated John Lennon's vocal with the intention of getting Paul to be able to duet him with virtually.
“We had access to all that footage, and to do something like that, you need the footage. The shots have to be right" said Jackson.
"I didn’t mention it to Paul. I thought, ‘Suggesting to Paul that he sing onstage with John, he’s going to think I’m a fanboy geek idiot.’"
But eventually after Paul started touring post-pandemic, Jackson mustered the courage to approach him:
"Finally, I thought, ‘I’m going to regret this for the rest of my life if I don’t even suggest it.’ I sent him a text. I didn’t send him the mockup version, just a text trying to describe it to him."
He continued: "Within 10 minutes, he replied to me: ‘Yeah, this is a fantastic idea; let’s go do it.’ Then it was a frantic rush to restore frames that were missing from that long shot of John from Let It Be. But Paul was thrilled by it."
The idea paid off, with Paul incorporating the duet into his worldwide Got Back tour as well as his recent Glastonbury Festival headline set.
Paul McCartney - I've Got a Feeling (feat. John Lennon) (Glastonbury 2022)
