Yesterday was announced in March 2018. Filming began the following month around England, particularly Norfolk and Halesworth in Suffolk. Photography also took place at Wembley Stadium, the Principality Stadium, and in Los Angeles. The filmmakers paid $10 million for the rights to use the Beatles' music. Although none of the band members were involved, Boyle received approval for the project from them or their families.
Yesterday had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in May 2019, and was released in the United Kingdom and the United States in June 2019, by Universal Pictures. The film grossed $153 million worldwide against a production budget of $26 million. It received mixed reviews from critics, with praise for the premise, performances, and musical sequences but criticism for its familiarity and not exploring the concept further.
Plot
Jack Malik is a struggling singer-songwriter from Lowestoft who plays gigs to tiny audiences. His manager and childhood friend Ellie Appleton encourages him not to give up on his dreams. Jack is hit by a bus during a 12-second global power failure. After recovering, he sings the Beatles song "Yesterday" for his friends and discovers that they have never heard of the Beatles.
Jack searches for the Beatles on the Internet but finds nothing, then he discovers the band's records missing from his collection, and he realises that he is now living in a world where the group was forgotten. He begins performing Beatles songs, passing them off as his own.
Ellie has Jack record a demo with Gavin, a local music producer. Following a performance on local television, Jack is invited by pop star Ed Sheeran to play as his opening act in Moscow. Ellie is a mathematics teacher who has a parent's evening scheduled, and she declines to join him, so Jack's friend Rocky travels with him instead. After the gig, Sheeran challenges Jack to a songwriting duel; Jack plays "The Long and Winding Road", and Sheeran graciously accepts defeat.
In Los Angeles, Sheeran's ruthless manager Debra Hammer signs Jack to her label and engineers his rise to global fame. Ellie confesses that she has always been in love with him at his going-away party prior to moving to Los Angeles. Jack starts recording an album at EastWest Studios, but he cannot remember the lyrics for "Eleanor Rigby". Hoping to trigger memories, he goes to the Beatles' hometown of Liverpool, visiting landmarks such as Strawberry Field, Penny Lane, and the grave of Eleanor Rigby.
Ellie joins Jack in Liverpool, and they share a drunken evening and kiss, but she tells him that she is not interested in a one-night stand. The next morning, Jack and Rocky pursue Ellie to the train station, where she congratulates Jack but tells him that she cannot be a part of his celebrity life. He returns to Los Angeles heartbroken and desperate to have an everyday life again, while Ellie begins dating Gavin.
The record label prepares to launch Jack's debut album, but they reject his title ideas—taken from Beatles albums—and names it One Man Only, pushing his talent. Jack persuades them to launch the album with a rooftop concert in Gorleston-on-Sea.
Two people who also recall the Beatles approach him backstage. They tell him that they know that he did not write the songs, but thank him, having feared that the Beatles' music was gone forever. They give him the address of John Lennon, who never became a big star in this reality and has lived a long, happy life with his wife out of the public spotlight. Jack then visits John, who advises him to pursue the one he loves and always tell the truth.
Jack calls in a favour with Sheeran, who arranges for him to perform at Wembley Stadium. Jack confesses to the crowd that he plagiarised the music and that he loves Ellie, and he has Rocky upload the songs free on the internet, sabotaging the record release and enraging Debra. Jack and Ellie return to her home and finally make love. In the morning, Jack equates his feelings for Ellie with how Harry Potter must have felt when he defeated Lord Voldemort, but Ellie has no idea who he is talking about, much to Jack's chagrin. They decide to start a family, and Jack gives up stardom to become a music teacher.
Yesterday began as a 2012 screenplay, Cover Version, by the American writer Jack Barth.[4] Barth had been struggling to sell screenplays for decades. He conceived the story when it occurred to him that if Star Wars had not been created and he conceived it, he would not be able to sell it.[4] In Barth's script, a "meditation on professional disappointment", Jack did not find success with the Beatles songs.[4]
The British actor Mackenzie Crook worked on an early version of the script, and intended to direct the film.[5] He left to work on his television series Detectorists.[6] The script was passed to the production company Working Title. Years later, while working on clearance rights for the Beatles songs, a Working Title producer mentioned the screenplay to the British filmmaker Richard Curtis, who bought it and rewrote it as a romantic comedy.[4] On Curtis's insistence,[4] the screenplay is credited to Curtis and the story credited to Curtis and Barth.[7]
Curtis told interviewers he did not read Barth's script, preferring to use the premise to write his own version.[4] He told Den of Geek: "I sometimes found when I worked with original material that it doesn't come from the heart. So I tried to write a whole film that meant something to me, rather than having too much extra information."[8] However, according to Barth, the final film includes many elements of his screenplay, including John Lennon as a wizened fisherman and a joke about Harry Potter.[4] Curtis credited the HarryPotter joke to a suggestion from the American comedian Sarah Silverman, who is thanked in the credits.[4]
Barth complained that Curtis had taken sole credit for the screenplay and damaged him financially.[4] He felt that Curtis had changed the story to make Jack a successful songwriter as a reflection of Curtis's own career: "[Curtis] met Rowan Atkinson at Oxford, he came out of Oxford and immediately rode Rowan Atkinson to huge success in his early twenties. He's never been knocked out, as far as I know. Why wouldn't [Jack] become the most successful songwriter in the world?"[4]
Casting
In March 2018, it was announced that Curtis and director Danny Boyle were working on a musical comedy set in the 1960s or 1970s following "a struggling musician who thinks he's the only person who can remember the Beatles", with Himesh Patel cast in the lead role.[9] Boyle was convinced Patel was the right choice after listening to him perform the Beatles songs "Yesterday" and "Back in the U.S.S.R." during auditions.[10] Boyle felt that Patel's voice had soul.[11] Patel sang and performed guitar and piano himself.[12]
Ana de Armas appeared in the trailer but not the film, resulting in a fan lawsuit
In February 2019, it was announced that the title of the film was Yesterday.[27] It is estimated to have cost around $10 million to get the rights for the Beatles' songs to be featured in the film, with the rights to their music being held by Apple Records and Sony/ATV Music Publishing.[28] Scenes with de Armas, who played another love interest for Jack, were cut as test audiences felt it made Jack less sympathetic.[29] Ana de Armas appeared in some of the early promotional material before the final edit was made, which led to a $5m lawsuit in the US[30] when two fans claimed they were "duped into renting the [$3.99] movie because she [de Armas] was in the trailer".[31] U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson allowed the class-action lawsuit to proceed in December 2022, stating that "At its core, a trailer is an advertisement designed to sell a movie by providing consumers with a preview of the movie."[32] Wilson later dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that the "injury is self-inflicted" and thus no standing to sue.[33] By April 2024, the two men had settled with Universal over court fees.[34]
The soundtrack to Yesterday was released by Capitol Records on the 21st of June 2019, 7 days before the United Kingdom and United States release of the movie.
Yesterday featured several Beatles songs performed by Patel, with Adem Ilhan as the film's music supervisor.[35] Licensing the Beatle's discography cost the producers of the movie close to $10 million.[36]
Daniel Pemberton is the film composer for Yesterday. According to Pemberton, "The idea was to get him comfortable with the songs and getting him to the stage where basically he could play Wembley Stadium."[37] He worked with Patel to cover each song with a "very raw, human performance" style, as Boyle liked it,[37] and refrained from over-produced sounds.
Release
The first official trailer of the film was released on 12 February 2019.[38] The film had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on 4 May 2019.[39] A local screening of the film took place at the Gorleston Palace cinema on 21 June 2019.[40] Universal spent $75.4 million promoting the film worldwide.[41]
Reception
Box office
Yesterday grossed $73.3million in the United States and Canada and $81.3million in other territories (including $19.4million in the United Kingdom),[42] for a worldwide total of $154.6million, against a production budget of $26million.[43] It spent its first five weeks in the Top 10 at the domestic box office.[44]
In the United States and Canada, the film was projected to gross $10–15 million from 2,603 theatres in its opening weekend.[45] The film made $6.1 million on its first day, including $1.25 million from Thursday night previews. It ended up slightly exceeding projections and debuting to $17 million, finishing third behind Toy Story 4 and Annabelle Comes Home.[46] In its second weekend the film made $10.7 million, again finishing in third (behind Spider-Man: Far From Home and Toy Story 4),[47] then grossed $6.8 million in its third weekend, falling to fifth.[48]
Deadline Hollywood calculated the net profit of the film to be $45million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues and ignoring the UK tax credits on the production cost.[49] Universal officially took an $87.8 million loss on the film in 2019, which Deadline deduced would eventually result in a $26.5 million profit after TV and video sales (an estimated $78.4 million by early 2020) were taken into account.[41]
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 63% of 366 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The website's consensus reads: "Yesterday may fall short of fab, but the end result is still a sweetly charming fantasy with an intriguing—albeit somewhat under-explored—premise."[50]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 55 out of 100, based on 45 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[51] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A-" on an A+ to F scale.[52]
Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film four out of five stars, writing "although this film can be a bit hokey and uncertain on narrative development, the puppyish zest and fun summoned up by Curtis and Boyle carry it along."[53]Robbie Collin also responded positively in his review for The Daily Telegraph, saying the film "rallies in style for a beautifully judged and surprisingly moving finale, which owes a lot to Patel and James's chemistry."[54]Owen Gleiberman of Variety, meanwhile, was less enthusiastic, claiming the film had little soul and calling it a "rom-com wallpapered with the Beatles' greatness."[55] Laura Snapes of The Guardian called Yesterday "the latest jukebox movie to put its women on mute."[56]
Beatles' response
Paul McCartney revealed in an interview with Billboard that he and his wife Nancy Shevell went to see the film in a cinema in The Hamptons and "loved it".[57] Boyle also sent copies of the completed film to Ringo Starr and his wife Barbara, as well as George Harrison's widow Olivia, and received "lovely messages" from both parties.[58] John Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, also approved of the film's depiction of her late husband.[59]
As remarked upon in the media, a number of other works have had a similar premise or theme[60][61] involving parallel worlds or time travel. The 2010 Japanese mangaI'm a Beatle (僕はビートルズ, Boku wa Bītoruzu) by Tetsuo Fujii and Kaiji Kawaguchi[62] involves an almost identical concept of a musician travelling back in time to 1961 and being surprised when he plays "Yesterday" and no one knows of the Beatles; he similarly plays their material and is successful. Others include the 2011 French graphic novelYesterday by David Blot and Jérémie Royer (the title, again, alluding to the Beatles song),[63][64][65] the 1990s British sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart,[66] the 2006 French film Jean-Philippe,[67][68] and Nick Milligan's 2013 novel Enormity.[69] Danny Boyle has said he was not aware of earlier works with similar premises when he read the script but had later become aware of a French film and British sitcom with a similar premise after the film's first trailer was revealed.[11]
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