‘Yellow Submarine’ Remake Sunk After ‘Mars Needs Moms’ Tanks
Talk about awkward. Thelast headline below this oneis an endorsement of mocap filmmaking from Steven Spielberg. But the major industry talk today that wasn’t centered on SXSW was all about how the mocap filmMars Needs Momsabsolutely tanked in its debut weekend. There is some significant fallout from that failure: Disney has passed on the mocap remake of the Beatles’Yellow Submarine, whichRobert Zemeckishad planned to make this year.
THRmakes it sound like the low first weekend returns forMars Needs Moms($6.9m against over $150m — this one is a fiasco) were just the latest issue with the project, saying that there were budget problems and that a meeting scheduled between Robert Zemeckis and the various Beatles heirs had been rescheduled several times, then finally scrapped in December. So, bascially, “don’t call us, and we’re definitely not going to call you?” (Deadlineexplicitly says that ‘Disney insiders’ claim the film was dead before this weekend. Wonder if David Tennant was right when hesaidback in October that the film was off?)
Disney alreadywalked awayfrom ImageMovers Digital, the mocap company that counts Robert Zemeckis as a primary member, and his last mocap feature,A Christmas Carol, also fared poorly at the box office. Ironically, his mocap work has been getting better. I thoughtCarolwas the best-looking one yet, at least at the time.Mars Needs Momslooked creepy as hell, like the animation accidentally tripped and fell right back into the uncanny valley. I’m not sure whether that did in the movie, or whether audiences just didn’t know the film existed, but the fallout is the same.Yellow Submarine, in the incarnation that wasset to featureCary Elwes(George Harrison),Dean Lennox Kelly(John Lennon),Peter Serafinowicz(Paul McCartney)andAdam Campbell(Ringo Starr), is dead.
Robert Zemeckis can shopYellow Submarineto other companies, and ifTintindoes well at the end of this year, it could help him get it set up somewhere else.Tintinhas the benefit of not aiming for the same realistic look as the characters in the movies Mr. Zemeckis has made via mocap, but Yellow Submarine might not have gone for anything like photo-real characters, either.
