The long-awaited upcoming KISS biopic has received an update from director McG – see what he had to say below.
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The long-gestating KISS film Shout It Out Loud is set to be directed by McG, who has in the past helmed Charlie’s Angels, We Are Marshall, The Baby Sitter and more. The biopic was first announced by the band’s longtime manager Doc McGhee in 2019.
In 2021, it was reported that Netflix was nearing a deal for the film, and that Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Rønning (Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales) would direct – he later exited the project.
Now, McG has shared an update on the film while at the band’s KISS Kruise event in Las Vegas over the weekend, per Blabbermouth. Discussing the upcoming film, McG said: “I think KISS is the most exciting rock ‘n’ roll band in history, and because of that, we owe the KISS Army the most exciting film in history.”
“I think with this band, the fact that this band broke on a live record, [they] broke on a live record because people want to feel what it was like to go to the show,” he continued. “My goal is to give everybody something you can go to the theater and just have your face melted and just feel the heat coming off the stage — and for that matter, coming off the screen — which is what I get so excited about at a KISS show.”
McG went on to add: “Then, when it gets to the streamers and you can watch it at home and live this incredible story that is far more strange than fiction – two buddies, a cab driver [driving] to Madison Square Garden [saying], ‘One day, that’s going to be me,’ and a substitute teacher whose mother is a Holocaust survivor. Against all odds, didn’t get it done as Wicked Lester, put the paint on, developing personas, it’s the ultimate rock n’ roll fantasy, and it’s going to kick your fuckin’ ass.”
The director also said that he aims to portray the legendary band as disruptors in the music industry: “I think more than any other band in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, there is rock ‘n’ roll before KISS, and there is rock ‘n’ roll after KISS… Rock ‘n’ roll was pretty straightforward until KISS came along and blew it up, literally and figuratively, with bombs and pyrotechnics and spitting blood and costumes and fun and explosiveness and providing a life that was larger than our own… Taylor Swift has pyrotechnics. That all traces back to KISS. This is the inflection point in the movie where the world was forever changed through the power of rock ‘n’ roll.”
Back in June, it was reported that Nick Jonas had been cast as Paul Stanley, though those reports have yet to be confirmed by anyone involved in the project. Nick Jonas is believed to be recording his own vocals on Paul-led classics, but will “need time to train to replicate the jet-engine vocals of Stanley”. The remaining members of KISS have yet to be cast.
Concrete details surrounding the film’s development have yet to be shared, though reports indicate that the biopic will chronicle the band’s formation in the 1970s – past reports indicate the film will also cover the first four years of KISS’ career.
A release date for Shout It Out Loud has yet to be announced.