Peter Jack­son will chron­i­cle the Bea­t­les’ Let It Be ses­sions in new documentary

Peter Jack­son has tak­en a brief hia­tus from direct­ing nar­ra­tive fea­tures since wrap­ping up his take on JRR Tolkien’s series of The Hob­bit nov­els, most recent­ly mar­shalling his tech­no­log­i­cal resources to restore and col­orize World War I archival footage for the ambi­tious project They Shall Not Grow Old. While we at Lit­tle White Lies were divid­ed on that par­tic­u­lar effort, today Jack­son has announced a new non­fic­tion film that may be more of a crowd-pleaser.

Dead­line breaks the news today that Jack­son will team with Apple Corps Ltd. on a doc­u­men­tary about the Bea­t­les, with a focus on their record­ing ses­sions for Let It Be, their final stu­dio record. Jack­son will draw on over 55 hours of nev­er-before-seen mate­r­i­al to get an unprece­dent­ed­ly inti­mate look into a leg­endary band on the verge of frac­tur­ing completely.

With all four mem­bers prepar­ing them­selves to pur­sue solo work, the lads from Liv­er­pool con­vened at Apple’s Sav­ile Row offices in Jan­u­ary 1969 to get one last album in the can despite mount­ing acri­mo­ny between them. The process was ardu­ous but fruit­ful, cul­mi­nat­ing in an impromp­tu per­for­mance on the roof of Apple’s offices instant enshrined in rock ​‘n’ roll his­to­ry. As chance would have it, that con­cert took place fifty years ago today.

While Jack­son has yet to estab­lish any timetable for when the pub­lic might see this film, he has con­firmed that it will be pro­duced with the coop­er­a­tion of liv­ing mem­bers Ringo Starr and Paul McCart­ney as well as wid­ows Yoko Ono Lennon and Olivia Har­ri­son. While the media obses­sive­ly fol­lowed the Bea­t­les every chance they got, stu­dio time was sel­dom caught on film, and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get a peek at the process of genius­es is too good to pass up.