Are you sure about that? The music video was the scenes from the movie.
The impression I got as a Daft Punk fan in the 90s was that the movie was commissioned alongside the production of the album and not an afterthought.
The album was released after a couple of singles (iirc) but that’s very typical for artists to do. So it would make sense for the movie to also be released after the singles, even though it was already (mostly) completed.
Edit: seems my memory is largely correct. The movie was always a planned part of the album.
That's not what the Wikipedia page says and it's not even sourced.
Production of the movie started right at the end of the lengthy recording sessions (reminder that Discovery started being a thing late into the Homework recording sessions, with Short Circuit & One More Time being early productions) but it's rather uncertain how this process started. The one thing that I'm 100% sure of, is that the entire production was funded by DP themselves, and they are probably the only owners of the golden master of the movie. (Hence their media team's fault about the absolutely crappy 4K remaster and noise around it, that led to that awful Epic collaboration).
Singles were released at rather odd intervals for Discovery in particular (according to Bangalter, all songs were conceived as potential singles) and music videos were released after the singles.
EDIT : To be honest, it's a bit tricky to be 100% sure about the actual process, with most of the claims being unsourced random internet shenanigans, and the tendency of some people (hi Pedro) to rewrite history whenever they wish.
I can’t speak for where you’re based, but in the UK the music videos for the singles were aired when the singles were charting and before the albums commercial release.
There is no way the anime and the movie wasn’t part of the original albums concept and neither the part you quoted nor the link I shared disagrees with that point.
I agree the album is an album of singles. But that was never in dispute.
I also deliberately avoided discussing the themes of the songs and plot of the movie but musicians are frequently reinventing meanings to songs. And if the history of operatic movies has anything to go by, it’s that musicians seldom have a coherent plot for these things (regardless of whether you’re Philip Glass or The Who) so it’s usually better to just enjoy the randomness of these movies for what it is. But that doesn’t mean that the anime wasn’t still part of the original album concept.
If I understand your dates correctly, Aug 2001 to Oct 2001, that’s only 3 months. Which is far short of the time you’d expect an artist to need to start a movie project entire from scratch if it weren’t already part of the concept of the album.
Those dates could more easily be explained as delays in the animation process.
I’m feeling unwell though, so apologies in advance if I have completely misread and misunderstood your post.
Urm, the release date of the movie is not actually an indicator wherever what he said was true or not.
It's more then likely the backstory he outlined, which is I believe a minor subplot non-essential to the main story of the movie - has been added like this precisely because that was the theme of the song.
Because this was actually made by humans, they frequently talk with each other when making art in collaboration
This particular sequence in the movie (which is actually named Interstella 5555) is one of the most important ones in the plot.
Discovery has been explained many times by DP to be about childhood, not having any specific "theme" besides mixing disco and rock. Hence the name "disco very" and the "pun" in Veridis Quo. (which also happens to be a major sequence in the movie. Although DP never cared to enter the details of that particular composition, most likely memory hole'd by the protagonists.)
So no, this is definitely not the theme of the song. There are several years between the actual songwriting and the release of the movie.
Heck, if you actually see the movie, the ending sequence kinda explains that this is "one" of many interpretations of the record...
Taking a look at past interviews, it is more likely that 5555 is about what surrounded the actual release of Discovery (hugely anticipated sequel to a magnum opus that was wildly different from expectations) rather than an idea that was here from the start; see also Human After All for a continuation on this theme.
