Whenever you think of the legendary ‘80’s hair band Motley Crue, you don’t usually think jackass, except now one of the creative forces behind the show Jackass will help bring the movie adaptation of their best-seller, The Dirt.
This news hit right after the Jackass movie Bad Grandpa came out and hit #1 at the box office. Grandpa director Jeff Tremaine will now be helming The Dirt and we’re actually surprised that this movie could actually get made. The Dirt has been in the works for years, and it plunged into development hell, where we figured it would stay.
Yet apparently the band got the rights back from Paramount, and they’re determined to get it in theaters before they will reportedly call it a day and retire. (The band claims they want to go out on top, which is puzzling because that means they should have called it quits after Dr Feelgood.)
As Tremaine told Deadline, “It’s the spirit we’ve got to get right. It’s important to get actors who play, or who understand how to deliver the charisma it takes to be onstage. Rock stars have a swagger. Some of what they went through is funny, but overall this movie is not going to be a comedy. It’s pretty dark.” Deadline tells us the movie will be made independently, then it will be shopped to studios for domestic release.
There’s a number of music biopics in the works, including a James Brown movie, an Elton John film that will star Tom Hardy, and a long in the works Freddie Mercury movie that was originally going to star Sasha Baron Cohen. We’d love to see the rock movie come back, it’s been too long, so could these movies actually bring the rock movie back, or just be a tired Behind the Music rehash for the big screen?
And also how can this story be told in a new or different way? Haven’t we heard all the Motley Crue stories a million times already? Good questions for sure, and maybe we’ll find out if The Dirt can start a rock movie revival down the road.
