Rolling Stones Animated Film Planned By Across The Universe Writers

With Martin Scorsese's Rolling Stones doc, Shine a Light, booked to play theaters in April, I find myself much more interested in Ruby Tuesday, an animated film from Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, the writers of the Beatles musical Across the Universe, that will utilize the Stones' music in a similar fashion.

"We wrote an animated film before the strike that features the music of The Rolling Stones," says Clement on Movieweb. "Obviously, that is not just a kiddy film. You can't do The Stones, and think it will just be for kids. We hope that will get made in the next couple of years."

Adds Frenais...

"The film was supposed to start next month. It is called Ruby Tuesday. It is going to be CGI. It will be interesting. The animation is actually going to be done in Paris. It will be some pretty hip animation. It is amazing how many French animators work at Dreamworks. When we were doing Flushed Away, we were over there. It was like a foreign campus."

The film's title derives from the eponymous hit single, about a charmingly quixotic and possibly tragic groupie, by the Rolling Stones from their 1966 album Between the Buttons. Whether the main character in the film, a single mother searching for happiness in New York City, was a groupie at some point in her life is unknown, but the writers say that while the film will be "edgier" than most American-released animation today, it's not R-rated fare a la Ralph Bakshi's Fritz the Cat and Heavy Traffic.

It's about time the Rolling Stones, whose contributions and influence to film are not slight, had their own Yellow Submarine, don't you think?