Lord of the doco PETER JACKSON'S GIFT TO THE BEATLES

Sir Paul McCartney says the Kiwi director has given him the opportunity to heal from the supergroup's fall-out

They were reportedly ugly times, those final days of The Beatles: acrimony and bitterness reigned supreme as the four members of the world’s most revered music band poured down poison on each other.

For the past 50 years, at least, that’s what the world has been led to believe. Even the band themselves – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr – didn’t refute it.

But a new documentary by Kiwi director Sir Peter Jackson, using 56 hours of forgotten film footage and 130 hours of lost audiotape, has rewritten history and no one could be happier about it than Sir Paul McCartney himself.

“I’ll tell you what is really fabulous about it. It shows the four of us having a ball,” says the music icon, now aged 79.

“It was so reaffirming for me. I definitely bought into the dark side of The Beatles breaking up. But at the back of my mind, there was this idea that it wasn’t like that. I just needed to see proof.”

Just how Peter Jackson, best known for his Lord of the Rings trilogy, came to change the narrative of The Beatles is worthy of a movie itself.