On Monday, July 6, 1964, Shaftesbury Avenue in London's West End was a scene of pandemonium the likes of which London hadn't witnessed since the day the Second World War ended. On this hot summer night, an invasion that had been percolating in the north of England for years finally came to a full boil. The Beatles' debut film was having its world premiere at the London Pavilion, replacing Tom Jones, the film that heralded the critical and even more importantly commercial arrival of the new British cinema explosion.
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The Beatles official website had some fantastic designs from you all for our #BeatlesMovies challenge
If you imagined a Beatles song as a movie poster, what would it look like? Share what you make and tag it #BeatlesMovies.
The still open contest shows some incredible movie poster visions related to Beatles song titles. the race is still open and you can send them on Instagram to the tag above.
Artist Mark Reynolds conceived these film posters of Octopus's Garden and Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds - what kind of movie do you think it would be?
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The Beatles movies we've never seen after the disastrous Magical Mystery Tour
It was the feature film Rock Around the Clock (1956) that glued the future Fab Four to the screen right from the opening credits
The ghost filmography of the Beatles, was inaugurated as early as 1963 with the very first film proposed to the Fab Four: Yellow Teddybears. A much duller yellow than that of the future submarine and a chilling plot, which would have seen the Beatles grapple with a group of female students in uniforms decorated with yellow teddy bears to signal the loss of virginity. Nothing happened, fortunately.
United Artist required a third contracted film, At the end of 1965 there was even talk of a western, A Talent for Loving. The film was shot three years later without them.
Walter Shenson, the Hollywood agent who negotiated the film rights for the four, mentioned other luckily trashed ideas in the summer of 1966: "We turned down everything from The Beatles in the Army to The Beatles Meet Elvis Presley." Same fate for the Beatles thieves on horseback (Ringo dixit).
Real duels occurred when Disney entered the field proposing an animated film of the Jungle Book, for which the band would have to write the original soundtrack and appear in a short final cameo, just like in Yellow Submarine. Colliding, needless to say, Paul and John.
The former was enthusiastic, the latter diplomatically opposed: «The Beatles will never sing for Mickey fucking Mouse! Tell Walt Disney to go fuck himself!" The cartoon tycoon will die within a few weeks, and four vultures with a British accent and a nice helmet will appear in the film.
Brian Epstein commissioned Joe Orton, known for his macabre comedies, an even more daring screenplay made of sex, polygamy and cross-dressing, in which Mick Jagger and Ian McKellen would also be involved. A meeting with the author and the entire Beatles was scheduled for August 9th. The driver who arrived at the Orton home found the body of the playwright killed by his partner Kenneth Halliwell, who committed suicide in the same room. Epstein died eighteen days later. McCartney would later return to the subject: «We didn't do it because it was a gay film. Not that we were homophobic, just that unlike Brian we weren't gay."
The Beatles once wanted to make 'The Lord of the Rings' filmGollum, a creepy fixture in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, was played by Andy Serkis. But John Lennon would have played the creature in The Beatles' version.
Paul McCartney as Frodo? John Lennon as Gollum? George Harrison as Gandalf? Ringo Starr as Samwise Gamgee? Middle Earth and Beatlemania? Article Distributed by Tribune Content Agency
