The newly refurbished version of "The Beatles Anthology" has been rolling out on Disney+ over a period of days this week, with a newly commissioned Episode 9 premiering on the service Friday night. It gives the epic 1995 docuseries more than just a new edit and a fresh set of paint: it gives it an allnew finale that feels sweeter than the way the original project faded out with the gradual breakup of the most popular band of all time. And fans aren't likely to mind the extra hour's worth of either added context or additional sentiment.
The newly refurbished version of "The Beatles Anthology" has been rolling out on Disney+ over a period of days this week, with a newly commissioned Episode 9 premiering on the service Friday night. It gives the epic 1995 docuseries more than just a new edit and a fresh set of paint: it gives it an all-new finale that feels sweeter than the way the original project faded out with the gradual breakup of the most popular band of all time. And fans aren't likely to mind the extra hour's worth of either added context or additional sentiment.
With the new episode about to premiere, its director, Oliver Murray, told Variety about his intentions for this fresh finale. He's the same man whom Apple Corps drafted to a short movie about the "final Beatles single," "Now and Then," when that was unveiled two years ago. Even though he was not yet a teenager when the original "Beatles Anthology" first aired in prime time 30 years ago, Murray was considered the right candidate to draw together footage that was shot at the time with Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. The three ex-Beatles became active Beatles once again at that point in drafting old John Lennon home demos to expand upon for "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love," songs that were added to the "Anthology" albums also being released in '95. And they even attempted, briefly, "Now and Then," although it took till 2023 for that third number to come to fruition, but it at least gets foreshadowed in the new Ep9.
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The British filmmaker says he gave himself the mission to humanize the three musicians as they reassessed their legacy in the '90s, while also recognizing that their story is "modern, 20th century folklore (that) doesn't age, in the same way that something like 'The Lord of the Rings' doesn't age." (The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
The Apple people were clearly pleased with your work on the "Now and Then" film, to assign you this… assuming that it indeed came after you'd finished that, and you weren't working on them simultaneously.
I was in L.A. doing press for the "Now and Then" short film with Jonathan Clyde [the director of production for Apple Corps], and the last day of us being there, I was asked to come and see him in an office in Santa Monica, and he said, "We're doing the 'Anthology' — redoing it, re-releasing it — and it would be great if there was an extra episode. Would you take time over Christmas to have a think about what that might look like? Look at the materials, talk to the film archivist and photo archivist at Apple and watch material and come back with a treatment." So in-between my Christmas dinners and trips to see family, I was scribbling all sorts of ideas, with a loose brief that it would be great if we could keep going through the '90s sessions we used for "Now and Then." In making that, we'd only scratched the surface of the "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love" material, so I knew that we would be able to get that in. But I really wanted to kind of go above and beyond and use episode 9 as an opportunity to work untethered from the chronology of 1-8.
We had 1-8 sorted, and I knew what that looks like .because they're doing a faithful reconstruction of it. So the gift of 9 was that then we get to go back with a more contemporary sensibility and discuss how the band felt. How it felt to be a Beatle was the north star of episode 9.
I also liked the idea of making the "Anthology" feel a bit more cyclical. The themes of the brotherhood and the way that the band find each other in episode 1 is reflected in how they sort of rebuild their friendship in episode 9. So it comes full circle. Rather than episode 8 being the finishing point, where they break up, it was an opportunity to lift the kind of heavy fog of what was going on at the very end in 1970 and finish it in a much more positive light.
It's interesting that your episode, episode 9, ends in the mid-'90s, with the footage of making "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love" and the promotional interviews for the original "Anthology." There are no contemporary interviews or references to what came after, and it stops in time there just as surely as the original series stopped in 1970. It almost feels as if your episode could have been cut together as a final episode 9 in 1995, if there'd been time or willingness to consider that.
Yeah. Every time I shut the door in the edit suite, I sort of imagined myself saying, "Right, OK, it's 1995." And I could have gone and spoken to Ringo or Paul. But I didn't really like the idea of Ringo in 2025 talking about an interview that he gave in 1995 about something that happened in 1965. It was all too nebulous to do that. Given that the "Anthology" is sort of this artifact that you have to put white gloves on to mess with, I wanted to take the gloves off and make something that had more modern rhythms or feel. But I still wanted it to feel that it was tethered to something that was ultimately made 30 years ago … I wanted to approach it thematically, where we could go anywhere we liked, when we're talking about memory or brotherhood or that kind of tumbler jar existence they lived in. But I also did want to stick to that old mantra of "arrive late, leave early" in the story.
Obviously I didn't know it was gonna play out like this, but to do "Now and Then" first was kind of interesting. Because you could almost put "Now and Then," the short film, on the end as episode 9.5m in a way, because it all tethers together. I really loved getting Paul in there in episode 9 saying, "You know, 'Now and Then' maybe hasn't gone away [as a possibility to complete someday]. It's the Beatles — you never know." You actually also see George say, "I think we should leave it, and we'll come back to it," and knowing what happens to George, that's a very sad moment.
Source: "AOL Entertainment"
Source: Entertainment
Published: November 28, 2025 at 11:45PM on Source: PRIME TIME
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