The Beatles have released a new short film ahead of tomorrow's premiere of new song, Now And Then.
The 12-minute documentary is entitled Now And Then: The Last Beatles Song and tells the story of how surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr worked with Apple Corps and film maker Peter Jackson to bring the song into the 21st century.
Now and Then, which is released on Thursday at 2pm, was pieced together from a demo recorded by the late John Lennon in 1979 and using new technology, including AI, the track features all four Beatles including guitarist George Harrison, who passed away in 2001.
A new music video for the song directed by Lord of The Rings director Jackson debuts this Friday afternoon.
Speaking about directing the music video, Jackson says: "When Apple asked me to make the music video, I was very reluctant - I thought my next few months would be a hell of a lot more fun if that tricky task was somebody else's problem, and I could be like any other Beatles fan, enjoying the night-before-Christmas anticipation as the release of a new Beatles song and music video approached - in 1995, l loved the childlike excitement I felt as the release of Free As A Bird was inching closer.
"I could have that experience once again - all I had to do was say no to The Beatles.
To be honest, just thinking about the responsibility of having to make a music video worthy of the last song The Beatles will ever release produced a collection of anxieties almost too overwhelming to deal with.
"My lifelong love of The Beatles collided into a wall of sheer terror at the thought of letting everyone down. This created intense insecurity in me because I’d never made a music video before and was not able to imagine how I could even begin to create one for a band that broke up over 50 years ago, had never actually performed the song, and had half of its members no longer with us."
As well as the new song and the re-release of the band’s Red and Blue albums, next week also marks the 60th anniversary of The Beatles only ever Irish concerts in Dublin and Belfast.
