The Beatles are coming to a game console near you.
For the first time, the legendary group’s music will be featured in the lucrative video game market in a deal with MTV Games and Harmonix, creators of the “Rock Band” series. The game is scheduled to make its debut in time for next year’s holiday season.
“The project is a fun idea which broadens the appeal of The Beatles and their music. I like people having the opportunity to get to know the music from the inside out,” Paul McCartney said in a statement.
The game will not be titled “Rock Band,” but will work with the existing instruments — a guitar, drums and microphone. Game developers were cagey about whether new instruments, such as a keyboard, would be incorporated.
“I would say that there will be interactive performances of The Beatles’ music as well as new dimensions that you haven’t seen from us before,” Harmonix Chief Executive Alex Rigopulos told reporters on a conference call Thursday.
The video game has become a key and profitable market for established musical acts such as Metallica and Aerosmith to expose their music to a new generation of fans; some bands have even debuted their music via video games.
“The Beatles continue to evolve with the passing of time and how wonderful that The Beatles’ legacy will find its natural progression into the 21st century through the computerized world we live in,” said Beatles drummer Ringo Starr in a release. “Let the games commence.”
Grammy winner Giles Martin, son of The Beatles’ producer, George Martin, will serve as music producer, with input from McCartney, Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison.
The game will feature sampling of music and imagery from throughout the band’s career, from “Please Please Me” (1963) through “Let It Be” (1970).
Talks on the game have been in the works for almost a year and a half, said Paul DeGooyer, MTV’s senior vice president of electronic games and music.
But the news doesn’t mean that long-awaited digital downloads of the band’s music would be available anytime soon.
“We’re still working out the details,” said Jeff Jones, chief executive of Apple Corps Ltd., the London company formed by The Beatles that helps guard their legacy. “We have no announcement to make.”
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Viacom Inc. owns MTV and Harmonix.
In this Feb. 9, 1964 photo, The Beatles perform on the CBS “Ed Sullivan Show” in New York. (AP Photo)
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More