After being out of print for over five decades, The Beatles film Let It Be will finally be available again when it comes to Disney+ on May 8th.
The film, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, has been restored from the original 16 milimeter negative by Peter Jackson’s Park Road Post Production, and the company also remastered the sound using the MAL de-mixing technology that was developed for Jackson’s Get Back documentary in 2021, which also streamed on Disney+.
Lindsay-Hogg said in a statement, “Let It Be was ready to go in October/November 1969, but it didn’t come out until April 1970. One month before its release, The Beatles officially broke up. And so the people went to see Let It Be with sadness in their hearts, thinking, ‘I’ll never see The Beatles together again. I will never have that joy again,’ and it very much darkened the perception of the film.”
Jackson added, “I was so lucky to have access to Michael’s outtakes for Get Back, and I’ve always thought that Let It Be is needed to complete the Get Back story. Over three parts, we showed Michael and The Beatles filming a groundbreaking new documentary, and Let It Be is that documentary — the movie they released in 1970. I now think of it all as one epic story, finally completed after five decades.”
No word on if and when the remastered Let it Be will be released on DVD/Blu-ray.
REUTERS PHOTO
