Zemeckis' 'Yellow Submarine' surfaces, 'Shazam!' gets writer
Disney is diving into the past for its next project. Trust us, this one's as odd as their "Diary of Anne Frank" collab with David Mamet.
Robert Zemeckis is in talks to remake the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine" for the House of Mouse, according to the trades. The 1968 original, a psychedelic animated film, followed the Fab Four as they tried to stop the Blue Meanies from sapping all the fun from Pepperland.
See the top-grossing animated movies in the U.S.
The project has been delayed while Disney tries to get access to the band's music, which presumably means the remake would still feature the Beatles as main characters, despite the deaths of John Lennon and George Harrison.
-- With comic-book movies heating up at the box office, DC is trying again to bring Captain Marvel to the big screen.
Writer/actor Bill Birch has signed on for "Shazam!," the invocation young Billy Batson uses to become DC's Cap (who is, it must be said, unrelated to the Marvel Comics versions of Captain Marvel).
Captain Marvel has been portrayed in graphic novels like "Kingdom Come" and "The Dark Knight Strikes Again" as roughly Superman's equal in power, but with an even more simplistic worldview.
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A remake of "Yellow Submarine"? I don't like the sound of that at all. Of course, if they wanted to take the original and spruce it up a bit with some digital retouching, that would be cool.
For some stories like Snow White I can kind of understand the Disney touch because while it might dilute the story in some ways, it ensures the story remains in the public eye. However, Yellow Submarine has never been out of the public eye for too long; an excellent DVD was released years ago. I won't lose sleep over a Disney-fied version, but I'm not that curious to see it, either. Likewise, I won't pan the new version sight unseen, but the old version is not easily improved upon.