Yellow Submarine remake
Disney and Robert Zemeckis prepared a motion-capture Beatles remake, then closed the studio technology built to make it.
Quick facts
- Existence state
- Never Born
- Peak stage
- detailed preproduction
- Research confidence
- high
- Last verified
What it was
A planned performance-capture remake of the 1968 animated Beatles feature, to be directed by Robert Zemeckis.
Disney announced the project, licensed Beatles music and moved through casting and technical pre-production at ImageMovers Digital. It did not begin full principal capture as a released feature.
Existence timeline
Disney and Zemeckis reveal the performance-capture project.
The production plans to use the Beatles catalogue from the original film.
ImageMovers Digital develops the proposed capture production.
Disney closes ImageMovers Digital after a major box-office failure.
The planned feature does not proceed.
Why it ended
Disney shut ImageMovers Digital after Mars Needs Moms failed and ended the remake in 2011.
Last confirmed trace
Casting reports, development artwork and announcement material preserve the intended production.
What it left behind
Its cancellation marked the abrupt end of a studio-scale push to normalize Zemeckis's performance-capture filmmaking model.
How we classified it
The proposed archive unit never reached ordinary public access in the form being documented.
The strongest verified milestone maps to detailed_preproduction under Arrival Score V1.
Sources & verification
Last reviewed 2026-08-01. Sources are linked so readers can inspect the evidence directly.