A couple of months ago it was announced that Robert Zemeckis was planning to follow up the motion captured likes of A Christmas Carol and Beowulf with a new CG version of the Beatles cartoon musical, Yellow Submarine, which would be ready in time for the London Olympics in 2012.
To hit that date, the director needs to start putting weird motion-capture suits on people pretty soon and mapping their movements, so that he can translate it into a computer and create a virtual world for them to live in. It now look like Zemeckis has found his main cast, as THR has announced who is in talks to be underneath the pixels, playing the new version of the Fab Four.
Cary Elwes will take the role of George Harrison, British actor Dean Lennox Kelly (Robin Hood) will play John Lennon, Adam Campbell (Date Movie) will be Ringo Starr and Peter Serafinowicz is being lined up to play Paul McCartney. Although the casting of comedian/actor Serafinowicz may initially seem strange, if you seen much of his stuff, you’ll know he can do an aboslutely uncanny McCartney impression.
As the cast are only need for is movement and voice, with the computers handling the rest, it doesn’t really matter that none of them look even slightly like the Beatles, and indeed they won’t even be needed for the musical numbers. For those, Zemeckis is hiring Beatles tribute band The Fab Four, who will be motion captured miming to real Beatles songs (presumably so the CG characters look like they’re really playing instruments, although the tunes themselves will be the originals).
Although the whole motion-captured Yellow Submarine project seems more bizarre the more I think about it, it’s certainly going to be something strange and unusual to behold, and more than a little trippy.