Beatles' "Yellow Submarine" to be Remade in 3D Animation

On August 19, Disney announced it was teaming with director Robert Zemeckis to remake the Beatles’ 1968 animated classic, Yellow Submarine in the same 3D animation style Zemeckis is using in the upcoming A Christmas Carol, which stars animated versions of Jim Carrey in all of the major roles. Zemeckis’ submarine will use 16 Beatles’ songs.


From Variety:

Disney and Robert Zemeckis are looking to catch the wave of Beatlemania, floating a new 3-D "Yellow Submarine" for the bigscreen, with merchandising in tow and prospects for spinning off both a Broadway musical and a Cirque du Soleil stage production.

The original version of the film was animated in a psychedelic style (not dissimilar to Terry Gilliam animations in Monty Python’s Flying Circus about a year later) and featured several Beatles songs, including “Sgt. Peppers’ Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "All You Need is Love". The Beatles did not do their own voices in the film and their only active participation was in the live-action closing scene.

This is the latest example of the Beatles seeming resurgence in pop culture that began with “Love” the Vegas Cirque De Soleil production (and soundtrack album) based on remixes and remastered Beatles songs and continues next month with the release of Beatles: Rock Band video game and the entire remastered Beatles catalogue.

The original Yellow Submarine movie is both of its time and a timeless classic, melding of music and visuals. Hopefully, the Zemeckis version, planned for a 2012 release, will be a celebration and tribute to the original rather than solely a crass remake, but if gets more people to experience the music of the Beatles, then it can’t be all bad, can it?

USA Today runs weekly Superman comic online

As a tie-in to it's great new weekly comics experiment, "Wednesday Comics," DC Comics has partnered with USA Today to feature its lead strip, Superman, as a weekly online installment. Start here to begin the story. As of this writing, they're up to week 3.

"Wednesday Comics," a 12-week series, pays homage to the Golden Age of the Sunday newspaper's comics section. It is a 16-page weekly that unfolds to a 28" x 20" tabloid-sized, full-color spread, with each strip on its own 14" x 20" page. Each week find new stories on traditional DC superheroes Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Supergirl, The Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman and the Teen Titans, classic characters such as Adam Strange, Kamandi and Sgt. Rock, and quirkier heroes like Deadman, Metamorpho, the Metal Men and the Demon (here teamed with Catwoman).

At $3.99 an issue, it's bit expensive for a weekly book and not every strip works, but it's a great experiment that spotlights lots of character and creators, and throws in a bit of nostalgia. It's too early to tell which stories will ultimately turn out the best, and no one knows if and how the stories will be collected, but between the weekly fold-out newsprint and the online weekly Superman strip, it's a great time to be fan of DC Comics and is wide universe of characters.

Read more about the concept behind "Wednesday Comics" here.