The actor was in awe when he first heard the song and said the music legend seemed pretty pleased with it himself.
Discussing the single on the Soundtracking with Edith Bowman podcast, Clooney said: “[McCartney] sent it to me a year ago, and said ‘I got this thing, do you have any place in a movie for it?’
“I was like ‘Oh my god’.
“I got to hear it, and I wrote him and said ‘Jesus Paul, it’s a Beatles song. It’s a 50 year old Beatle’s song’.
Clooney, who keeps in regular contact with 81 year old McCartney, said the musician ‘screwed up’ in saying the single was made with the assistance of AI.
He added: “He says it, he screwed up by saying AI did it.
“What he was saying is they were using it to take out the background music, not to re-do Lennon’s voice.
Clooney admitted to being a big fan of The Beatles, adding: “I had dinner a couple of nights ago with Paul and I was sitting there with him, and there will never be a band that was around for that sort of period of time, that had that many amazing songs.
“Who took us from the journey of ties, and short hair, to changing the world.
“There will never be a band like that.
“When your third best writer is George Harrison - who was one of the greatest - that’s just, there will never be anything like it.
“Particularly their songs, which are such a part of our fabric, of our lives.
“Now and Then”, released with the help of AI technology from Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, arrived on Thursday 2 November to much fanfare. It is the final song from the storied pop band to feature all four original members.
Speaking to The Times, McCartney admitted that he never thought the band would last, but now he enjoys the idea that each member will live forever, in the memories of fans and in the music they made.
“I like the idea of not letting go of each other,” he said. “You know, when you have somebody you love so much. In many cases it’s a relative, and even though they go, you don’t want to let go — that’s what people say when somebody dies. They’re in your memory, always in your heart. And, yes, that’s certainly true of me and the boys.”
The track, described as the last Beatles song, was sourced from a Lennon demo and finished by Sir Paul and Sir Ringo Starr decades after the original recording. Speaking to BBC Radio 1, Sir Paul said: "Before John died he was working on some songs and Yoko (Ono, Lennon's wife) spoke to George Harrison and said 'I've got a cassette with some John songs on that he never got to finish.
Would you be interested in finishing them off?' So we thought about it and we thought 'Yeah, it would be great', 'cause in a way we would be working with John again, which we thought we would never be able to do."
"We worked and finished two of the songs but we didn't get around to finishing the third one, and the third one is called Now And Then. So it was knocking around for a long time and I kept thinking 'There's something here, you know, we should finish this'."
"I ended up talking to Ringo and we asked him if he fancied putting the drums on again and then I thought 'Well, I could up the bass a bit', so I put the bass on again. We already had George playing guitar and we had John on vocal it was kind of magical doing it. So we ended up making it into a real record, and that's what's being released."
He added: "When we were in the studio we had John's voice in our ears, so you could imagine he was just in the next room in a vocal booth or something, and we were just working with him again so it was joyful. It was really lovely, you know, because we hadn't experienced that for a long time obviously and then suddenly here we were, working with ol' Johnny."
