Peter Jackson had to convince Disney to let Beatles swear in new docu-series

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Filmmaker Peter Jackson had to convince Disney bosses to break their own rules about bad words in their movies ahead of the new Beatles documentary.

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The Lord of the Rings director spent years creating his six-hour epic from footage captured by Michael Lindsay-Hogg for his 1970 Let It Be film, and then realized he’d have to persuade conservative studio bosses to drop their no expletives rule.

“We’ve had to have a discussion with Disney about the swearing,” Jackson told Radio Times magazine. “The Beatles are Scouse boys (from Liverpool) and they freely swear but not in an aggressive or sexual way.

“We got Disney to agree to have swearing, which I think is the first time for a Disney channel (project). That makes them feel modern, too.”

Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back will be available to stream on Disney+ beginning November 25, and the director credits the COVID lockdown for the length of his Fab Four film.

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“The cinemas were closed and I had nothing to do but to keep editing,” he said. “I kept finding new stuff and new ways to tell the story. It ended up being six hours. I thought I couldn’t do it justice as anything shorter. And you can’t help but be aware that this is historical footage. I was very aware of my responsibility to get this into the world and not have it disappear into a vault again.

“To this day, I have never got over the fact that there was actual fly-on-the-wall footage shot of any band working in the 60s. The fact it happened, and it happened with the Beatles, is amazing. You watch them at work and see them much more honestly than in any other Beatles footage. People won’t believe it when they see it. It’s like going back in a time machine.”