Anyone watching Peter Jackson's career over the last two decades would be completely unsurprised to hear that he's working on a second Beatles project, but this time alongside Paul and Ringo.
With Lord of the Rings sprawling over three movies and then needing another three for The Hobbit, it's not surprising that the eight hours of 'Get Back' simply was not enough. An amazing capture of the creative process, the series has been critically acclaimed, but in an interview with Dateline, Jackson has revealed that the new project is taking a different approach and will be a collaboration with the surviving Beatles.
“I’m talking to The Beatles about another project, something very, very different than Get Back,” he said. “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… We are never in a position where we have to do anything, but we’ve got a few things percolating.”
“It’s so technically complicated I’m trying to work how exactly I’ll do it,” he 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. They’re not fantasy epics, but they’re pretty interesting.”
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Jackson was tight-lipped about any further details, but fans have already started the guessing game and are rightly losing their minds about the possibility of Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr's involvement.
The careful treatment of the 'Get Back' series led to five Emmy nominations and raised the bar for what music documentaries can achieve. The films were based around 55 hours of unreleased footage and 140 hours of audio of the iconic band filmed in January of 1969 when they were recording seminal LP Let It Be. Originally stated for TV, the series was approved by the surviving members and the families of Lennon and Harrison.
It showed fans a different side to the supposed disharmony in the Beatles camp at the time.
“Sure, there’s moments of drama - but none of the discord this project has long been associated with," said Jackson. "Watching John, Paul, George, and Ringo work together, creating now-classic songs from scratch, is not only fascinating - it’s funny, uplifting and surprisingly intimate."
