It’s future had been in the balance for a while, but now THR reports that Disney has officially severed ties with Robert Zemeckis’ planned remake of Yellow Submarine. It seems the studio was hanging on to see how Mars Needs Moms did at the cinemas – which was produced by Zemeckis’ using his beloved motion capture technology – but with that film opening with just $6.9 million on a $150 million production budget, the House Of Mouse doesn’t want to risk spending any more cash on Zemeckis mo-cap
Zemeckis assembled a cast for Yellow Submarine back in January of 2010, with Cary Elwes, Peter Serafinowicz, Adam Campbell, and Dean Lennox Kelly slated to star. There have few updates on the project since that news broke, although behind-the-scenes Yellow Submarine had apparently been plagued with problems with the budget and creating a feasible schedule. Indeed it is yet to get the final go ahead from those who control the rights to the Beatles music, as a meeting to present things to them has been continually pushed back. 16 songs from The Beatles back catalogue were to be used in the movie.
Now Zemeckis is free to take the project to another studiom but it’s far from certain anyone would want it. Although Polar Express eventually proved a success thanks to repeated Christmas DVD and TV business, Beowulf and A Christmas Carol never found enough enthusiasm to justify their huge budgets, and with the failure of Mars Needs Moms, it may sound the death knell for Zemeckis’ particular creepily realistic brand of mo-cap. Either way the movie is certain to now miss its summer 2012 release, which was originally planned to tie into interest in the London olympics.
Disney has already closed Zemeckis’ mo-cap studio, so it seems they really do want nothing more to do with his brand of animated film.
It also makes you wonder whether the film was really pretty much dead for a long time, as David Tenant suggested last October, and that the Mars Needs Moms failure was just the final nail in the coffin.