After Mars Needs Moms sent audiences screaming into the night, their veins turned glacial and chattering by Robert Zemeckis’ hollowed-out simulacra of human life—and more importantly, refusing to give it any money—Disney has quietly put an end to its proposed remake of Yellow Submarine, in which Zemeckis would similarly drag The Beatles into the shadows of the uncanny valley. The Hollywood Reporter floats the idea that the decision is directly related to Mars' horrible opening numbers; however, the studio was quick to point out and/or spin that the project was already in jeopardy well before Mars tanked at the box office.
Which is true: A December meeting with the surviving Beatles and their living heirs was scrapped and never rescheduled, and Deadline reports that Disney made the decision to shutter Zemeckis’ motion-capture lab ImageMovers Digital as early as last year, when the Jim Carrey-starring A Christmas Carol once more had critics combing their thesauruses for synonyms for “lifeless” and “unsettling.” Of course, at the time of the original announcement, Yellow Submarine was said to be safe, and the film had even finalized a cast that would have found Cary Elwes, Peter Serafinowicz, Dean Lennox Kelly, and Adam Campbell playing George, Paul, John, and Ringo, respectively. Whenever the decision was made, the end result is the same: Zemeckis’ mad tyranny of motion-capture technology has ended, and he has now reportedly been cowed into considering working with actual flesh-and-blood human beings again. Assuming he can pluck out their eyes first.