Following the argument with Sir Paul McCartney seen in the movie, George Harrison went home and wrote the song "Wah-Wah", which he recorded for his first solo album two years later. Three days after the argument with McCartney, Harrison temporarily quit the Beatles after a row with John Lennon. Harrison was coaxed back a week later, after McCartney promised that they would start recording in the band's new Apple Studios, instead of Twickenham Studios.
John Lennon believed that Director Michael Lindsay-Hogg deliberately avoided including shots of him and Yoko Ono in favor of more shots of Paul McCartney. Lennon said he felt that "the camera work was set up to show Paul and not to show anybody else" and that "the people that cut it, cut it as 'Paul is God' and we're just lyin' around ..." Ringo Starr also complained that most of the "clowning" he performed at the director's behest was never used.
The Beatles' Producer George Martin and independent Producer Glyn Johns prepared mixes of the soundtrack album, neither of which satisfied everyone. Martin effectively quit working with the band when criticisms started turning personal, but returned to make "Abbey Road" after The Beatles promised to work with him "like in the old days", with Martin calling the shots in the studio. A second remix by Johns was also rejected, and with Martin unwilling to work any further on "Let It Be", Phil Spector was hired to complete the soundtrack.
A restored version of the film with additional material was planned for DVD release in 2003, to accompany "Let It Be...Naked", Sir Paul McCartney's remix of the "Let It Be" album. However, in restoring the film, Apple Studios discovered that the additional unreleased footage of the Beatles contained too many controversial issues that still needed to be resolved. Press at the time reported, Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Ringo Starr decided that the movie and its additional material would not be released on DVD during their lifetimes, over concerns that it could hurt The Beatles' brand. This changed when director Peter Jackson, for the project's 50th anniversary in 2020, re-edited the footage into a new film, "The Beatles: Get Back" and the original "Let It Be" movie was planned to be released as an extra with the "The Beatles: Get Back" DVD/Blu-Ray. These plans were abandoned again when the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and "The Beatles: Get Back" became a 3 part TV series. On May 8th, 2024, a remastered version of the original "Let It Be" film was released on Disney+.
The first cut, which was supervised by Michael Lindsay-Hogg and The Beatles, ran for three hours and thirty minutes. However, a second version was edited in the absence of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. This new cut (with a considerable amount of "John and Yoko" footage cut out) became the one hour and twenty-one-minute release that made the theaters.