"All You Need Is Love?" No, you also need a studio.
Walt Disney Pictures has decided to stay on dry land and scrapped Robert Zemeckis' planned remake of "Yellow Submarine," the 1968 animated film featuring the Beatles and their adventures in Pepperland, a paradise under the sea, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The decision to drop "Submarine" was apparently made on the wake of this past weekend's disastrous box office returns for the $150 million-budgeted "Mars Needs Moms," produced by Zemeckis, which grossed only $6.9 million.
The bombing of "Mars" was the final nail in the coffin for the studio's increasingly uneasy relationship with Zemeckis and his love of motion capture animation, a filmmaking technique (often described as "creepy" when it comes to human characters) he's been exploring exclusively since 2004's "The Polar Express."
Disney had been starting to get a little iffy on the process since the disappointing box office returns of 2009's "A Christmas Carol."
Disney sinking "Yellow Submarine" means Zemeckis is now free to shop the project around to other studios. The "Back to the Future" director had Cary Elwes, Dean Lennox Kelly, Peter Serafionwicz and Adam Campbell attached to star as the Fab Four, but no word on whether that still holds true.
We have a feeling "Yellow Submarine" is sunk for good, and Zemeckis will go back to making movies that don't involve putting green dots all over the actors' faces. Which might be a good thing.
