In the wake of his glorious and well received documentary on the First World War, They Shall Not Grow Old, Peter Jackson will undertake his documentary hat again to edit over 50 hours of unseen Beatles footage for a new film.
The film will utilise footage shot in January 1969 when the band first started to work on the Let It Be material (however it wasn’t known at the time). The sessions were an experimental departure for the band by eschewing Abbey Road for Twickenham studios, with the intention to produce a live performance of the new material as part of a television special. Unfortunately the band famously failed to finish the work and abandoned TWickenham before returning to work at Abbey Road.
It’s unclear how much of the footage was intended or left off the cutting room floor for Let It Be. It might potentially be a even more brutal look at the sessions that were dubbed to ‘break up the band’. However Jackson has stated the footage shows less of the ‘fighting’ than people imagined happened.
Jackson will be working with his They Shall Not Grow Old partners, Producer Clare Olssen and Editor Jabez Olssen. The footage will be restored by Park Road Post of Wellington, New Zealand, to a pristine standard, using techniques developed for the WW1 documentary film which has been nominated for a BAFTA for best documentary.
If the footage is restored and audio suitably treated in the same delicate and detailed manner as They Shall Not Grow Old, this could be the most intimate look at the Beatles in the studio ever officially released. Recent restoration and releases from the band have been well received throughout various 50th anniversaries for the band’s material. It’s stunning to think a band that stopped working together 50 years ago can still be culturally relevant and in demand.