Now here’s a movie I never would have imagined being slated for a remake. Robert Zemeckis and Walt Disney Studios have acquired the rights to the 1968 animated Beatles film, Yellow Submarine, as well as the musical rights for the sixteen songs featured in the movie. The plan is to utilize Zemeckis’s motion-capture animation technology to make a remake to premiere in London’s 2012 Summer Olympic Games.

If you haven’t seen the original Yellow Submarine, you’re missing out on quite the psychedelic treat. The animated movie sees the utopian world of Pepperland and its heroes, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, under attack by the bizarre Blue Meanies. One survivor is sent to England to find help, which winds up coming in the form of the Fab Four themselves, the Beatles. Even though it’s probably my favorite of the Beatles’ movies, the quartet don’t really even appear in the movie, with other actors voicing the animated versions of Paul, George, John, and Ringo.

If you have seen the original movie, you know how odd it is that anyone would make a remake of the film. I can’t exactly say the movie is a good movie and that’s why it shouldn’t be remade. It’s almost like the original is just too bizarre and surreal for any kind of remake, particularly one that carries the Disney name.

According to Variety, the accomplishment of getting the rights has been quite a battle, particularly for the songs that appear in the movie – Beatles classics like “When I’m 64,” “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” and “Nowhere Man.”

I can’t say I’m opposed to this remake like so many others that are announced. Instead I just find the idea unfathomable. Why would such a trippy classic be considered for a remake? Then again, so many of us have criticized Zemeckis’s CG animation for being a bit askew, maybe it’s the perfect mode of recreating that Yellow Submarine strangeness, without the need for psychotropic drugs.