Peter Jackson reveals challenges of raising John and George from the dead for new Beatles film

Peter Jackson has opened up about the challenges of using dark rituals to raise two of the biggest popstars in history from the dead for his new documentary about the Beatles.

“It was the elephant in the room from the start,” explained the Lord of the Rings legend.

“How to make a film about the biggest band of all time when two of the guys were dead.”

Initially, Andy Serkis would have played John and George using his sophisticated motion capture technology.

“That was always the most obvious choice. Andy had the Gollum experience, you know, we’d worked together. Problem was, playing two people at once was exhausting for him. There’d be a shot of the band playing and there’d be George playing guitar, and Andy would film that, then it’d cut to John singing and Andy would have to rush across the stage and mocap that. It was too much.

“And he was rubbish at guitar.”

Ultimately, Jackson settled on using the dark arts to achieve his goal.

“I found a necromancer in Christchurch who was very reasonably priced. He was happy to resurrect John and George from the dead and that meant, you know, we had the Beatles.

“Okay, so two of them were zombies, but we had a really good make-up guy who made them look fantastic and we just had to make sure there was a ready supply of brains on set for them.

“With the two of them onboard we were able to capture some fantastic footage of the Beatles playing live that has never been seen before.”

Jackson is unsure where the two zombie Beatles are now.

“After we finished, I didn’t have the heart to end the dark spell, so I just let them go in the woods near Liverpool. Seemed the kindest thing to do.”

Following his pioneering zombie work with the Beatles, Jackson is now understood to be looking at a new film about Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Marc Bolan.