Celebrity Harvest

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The artwork for the film.

Celebrity Harvest was a scrapped Gorillaz film. Jamie Hewlett announced its development shortly after the release of the debut album, and also stated there would be a soundtrack album to go along with it. The movie was then further teased in Blur's Think Tank, appearing in a booklet which revealed the title of the film, Celebrity Harvest. In a 2005 interview with the band, it was revealed that the movie had been scrapped. The film was originally planned for a late 2003 release before its cancellation. Three scripts were written for a potential Gorillaz movie, with Celebrity Harvest being one of them.The script for Celebrity Harvest was written in collaboration with writers from The Simpsons.  It was to be inspired by the British TV drama Quatermass, with a plot involving "the end of time, brought about by the sickness of celebrity culture".  It's plot would revolve around boils that begin to appear on the heads of celebrities whose egos would become too big. However, the band scrapped the film after cancelling their deal with Dreamworks because the studio wanted to make Gorillaz "family-friendly". After the film was scrapped, most of the art was later incorporated into Gorillaz' second album Demon Days.

Plot

The plotline for Celebrity Harvest was to involve an apocalyptic scenario brought about by "the sickness of celebrity culture". It was to take place during a time when people become driven by ego, set in a world with an endless night, where daytime doesn't exist. It was to revolve around boils that would appear on the heads of celebrities whose egos became too big. In the movie, Russel would go insane and leave the band, which affects all four of them. Murdoc would also leave Gorillaz to form a heavy metal band, who became cannibals after he locks them in the basement for an extensive period of time. Murdoc would then be chased out of Kong Studios, before being attacked by the heavy metal band and turning into a zombie. Del would also "turn bad" after his spirit was taken away from Russel by the Grim Reaper. Many elements from the plot of Celebrity Harvest would make their way into Phase 2 of Gorillaz, including a backstory for Noodle and Russel. The art style of Phase 2 also comes from much of the concept art for the film. Many of Phase 2's music videos were influenced by the film as well, with "Rockit" also sharing many elements with Celebrity Harvest.

Trivia

• 2-D is seen wearing glasses in some art.
• Celebrity Harvest is actually only one of multiple scrapped scripts written for a Gorillaz film.
• Another script written for a Gorillaz film was to star the Gorillaz characters acting as characters from the ancient chinese novel Journey To The West, an idea that would later turn into Damon & Jamie's 'Monkey: Journey To The West opera in 2007.
• Another idea for a Gorillaz movie involved record labels killing off their artists.
• In 2018, Jamie expressed being open to the possibility of trying to make another Gorillaz film again, saying that his next project may be "probably a full length movie about my characters".
• The script for Celebrity Harvest was 360 pages long, (accidentally 6+ hours of content). 
• There were talks of brand new Redman and D12 songs being in the film. It is not know if they came to fruition.

Gallery

Promotional Poster.

A storyboard for the film, showing Noodle getting chased by multiple zombie-like Murdocs.

Another storyboard for the film, showing Murdoc and Russel being chased by one of Murdoc's metal band members, while Del is leaping from a window to another.

Sketches of Murdoc's metal band members.

2-D next to The Grim Reaper.

Gorillaz with the Space Monkeys.

Noodle shown front and center.

What is believed to be a promotional poster.