Celebrity Harvest

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This article is about the scrapped film. You may be looking for the Phase One: Celebrity Take Down DVD.

Celebrity Harvest
Overview
Also Known As	Whoops! There Goes My Career • Come Back With That Apple Pie • I Don't Like The Smell Of That, Amigo
Writer	Cass Browne • Jamie Hewlett
Director	Alfred C. Klinker (fictitious)
Language	English

Celebrity Harvest is one of the few scripts written for a scrapped Gorillaz movie sometime in 2002–03.

Information

Prior to the release of their B-sides compilation album G-Sides in the United States, Jamie Hewlett announced that a Gorillaz film was in the early stages of development, with the soundtrack set to serve as their second album. Three scripts were written for the film, including Celebrity Harvest, which drew inspiration from the British sci-fi TV series Quatermass^W and told the story of "the end of time brought about by the sickness of celebrity culture". The film was scheduled for release by the end of 2003.

In a 2005 interview with Trax magazine, Murdoc confirmed that the film had been cancelled. Jamie later revealed that major animation studios such as DreamWorks^W were reluctant to produce a dark film like Celebrity Harvest, and that he in turn disapproved of their suggestion to create a "Wizard of Oz^W"-style family film featuring the band.

Plot

Not much is known about the plot of the film. Hewlett originally described it as 'a very dark film' featuring 'cannibals and zombies', but revealed little of its plot up until the film's cancellation. It was later revealed that he and Cass Browne had written a full script revolving around a world trapped in an endless night, brought about by the sickness of celebrity, starring Gorillaz.

In the story, Russel would go insane and leave the band, affecting the others. Shortly afterwards, Murdoc would leave Gorillaz as well, to form a heavy metal band that turns cannibalistic after he locks them in the basement of Kong Studios. Del was also supposed to turn evil after the Grim Reaper exorcised him out of Russel.

Many of the film's elements were later reused in Phase 2, particularly in the Rockit music video and Rise Of The Ogre.

Further attempts

In 2006, Jamie once again expressed his interest in making a Gorillaz film. Rumours circulated that film producer Harvey Weinstein^W had held talks with Damon and Jamie during the Apollo residency of Demon Days Live. In September of the same year, Damon told Uncut magazine^W that the film was in development and involved Terry Gilliam^W. Filming was due to begin in September 2007, and the film was hinted to include musical numbers. However, in a 2008 interview with Gorillaz-Unofficial, Jamie stated that the film had been abandoned in favour of a new, more manageable in terms of budget, project.

In 2017, Jamie revealed to Q magazine^W that he was working on a ten-episode TV series about the band. Hewlett wanted to direct the first and last episodes himself, while the rest were to be directed by others. The series was supposed to feature a blend of traditional 2D animation and live action, as well as appearances from various guests from Humanz. The series was set to premiere in 2018. However, Jamie soon realised that he did not want the series to be tied to an album.

In 2020, Damon said that they had signed a contract with Netflix Animation^W to produce a feature-length Gorillaz film, due to be released after the second season of Song Machine. He described it as "one hour of pure fiction with music" and noted that they were evaluating the first draft of the script for the movie. In another interview, this time with Alt 105.3, Damon revealed that work on the script was underway. He also noted that it was a risqué project, as it was an expensive film with "a slightly obtuse story that only sometimes makes any sense". However, in 2023, Damon confirmed that the film had been scrapped due to Netflix's concerns about producing too many projects. He also said that he was tired of talking about it since 2002.

Gallery

Presumed promotional poster, featured in the Tomorrow Comes Today single

The film's poster with a title

Ditto

A sketch of presumably another poster

Concept art for the film, showing Noodle getting chased by multiple Murdoc-like zombies

Another piece of concept art for the film, showing Murdoc being chased by two of his metal band members, while Del is leaping from a window to another

2-D next to The Grim Reaper

Sketches of Murdoc's metal band members

Sketches for the film, featured in the Fire Coming Out booklet

Trivia

"Celebrity Harvest" being written in the bottom centre of the Think Tank booklet.

• The script for Celebrity Harvest was 360 pages long (approximately 6+ hours of content).
• The film was teased in the form of the Film Music B-side on the re-issued Tomorrow Comes Today single and in the CD booklet for Blur's seventh studio album, Think Tank.
• Rumour had it that D12 and Redman were set to write brand new songs for the film. It's unknown whether these songs were ever recorded.
• In addition to the Celebrity Harvest, there were other known scripts:
  • One of the first ideas planned for a Gorillaz movie was back in late 2001, when Gorillaz were approached by Steven Spielberg^W to produce a full-length animated feature, separate from Celebrity Harvest entirely.
  • 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 2020, the fan community Pazuzu Pictures attempted to recreate Celebrity Harvest from scratch based on whatever available material.