Prior to Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back, the 1969 “Let it Be” recording sessions were notorious for being miserable. The historical consensus was that the four band member’s egos had grown too big for them to work together as they once had, and ended up contributing significantly to the band’s breakup the following year.
However, Get Back disproved a lot of that. The nearly nine-hour Disney Plus documentary featured extensive remastered footage shot for the original Let it Be movie, indicating that while there were tense moments (particularly at the start), the general mood was much more friendly and chilled out than we’d been led to believe.
The finale saw the famous ‘rooftop concert’ on top of the Apple Corps Savile Row headquarters in London, with Jackson using split-screen to show us the concert in sync with the reaction from bemused Londoners below. That forms the centerpiece of a new 60-minute IMAX cut, known as The Beatles: Get Back — The Rooftop Performance.
It landed on IMAX screens in the U.S. and U.K. yesterday to sellout audiences, with The Hollywood Reporter revealing the special event played to packed houses in 70 locations, bringing in over half a million dollars at the box office, and IMAX International president Megan Colligan praised fans for turning up in their numbers.
“Peter Jackson edited this together so that you can see the concert in its full glory, and the turnout shows the power of coming together in a theater even though it’s on Disney Plus.”
If you missed yesterday’s screening you’re still in with a shot of seeing it, as it’s returning over the weekend of February 11-13. Tickets are selling out fast, so if you want a chance of seeing one of the most famous performances in rock history in the best way possible, this is your chance.
The Beatles: Get Back is streaming on Disney Plus.