Metallica’s new film will be appearing first in IMAX screens this August before making its way to standard theaters.Anyone familiar with the larger-than-life personality and gargantuan mythos of the legendary heavy metal band Metallica shouldn’t be surprised at the news of their latest venture. The group has appeared onscreen before, notably in the 2004 documentary “Some Kind of Monster,” but this new outing, titled “Metallica Through the Never” will be taking aim at large movie screens the way only this band can.
Specifically, the film will be breaking precedent by releasing through IMAX theaters across the U.S. on September 27 of this year first, before going into traditional theaters in October – the opposite of typical protocol. Judging from information in an article on Billboard, the movie will be a concert film intercut with scripted scenes starring the actor Dane DaHaan. The concert scenes are reported to have been recorded during a series of Vancouver performances, during Metallica’s “Full Arsenal” tour.
In recent years, the band has been known for taking risks, most notably with its eyebrow-raising collaboration with Lou Reed on the album “Lulu” in 2011, generally considered a bomb and garnering a measly 45 percent rating on Metacritic.
The Billboard piece featured an interview with Metallica’s drummer Lars Ulrich, who expressed excitement for the film’s release.
“There’s no secret there are parts of Metallica’s career that have been quite theatrical, of the different live experiences that we’ve had,” he said. “And so we thought that we would give some of those theatrical presentations a kind of 2012 upgrade, especially for a bunch of our fans who were very, very young who have only heard about what happened in the `80s and `90s.”
Any kind of big filmic event can be an opportunity to coordinate a major festival or outdoor movie screening. Metalheads and other interested parties can start planning their own personal viewings now in the months before the big release.