At this point in Metallica’s decades-long career, the band seems to be both breaking out of their usual album cycles and forming a longer-lasting impression of their storied history. While it was, largely, a sonic nightmare, last year’s collaboration with Lou Reed on “Lulu” showed a willingness on the band’s part to try something new and combine with other artists; they also recently announced their own curated music festival, the Orion Music + More event in June, which exposes their tastes to fans and expands on their legacy as a metal staple. So while the reception of their last album “Death Magnetic” in 2008 was frequently mixed, Metallica now seems to be focused on telling and remixing their own story.
And now the band has a film director attached to one of their next projects in expanding their enduring brand. In January, Metallica had announced that they intended to make a 3D film with producer Charlotte Huggins, and this week they named Nimrod Antal as the as-yet-untitled project’s helmer.
Antal was behind 2010’s “Predators,” the fifth film in the franchise starring Adrien Brody. He had also previously released Hungarian language film “Kontroll,” which collected the Award of the Youth honor at Cannes in 2004, plus 2007’s “Vacancy” (with Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson) and 2009’s “Armored” (Matt Dillon).
What pushed Antal over the edge to become director? Was Darren Aronofsky busy?
“I’ve been a fan of Nimróds since his first Hungarian film, Kontroll, showed up at Cannes in 2004 and blew everybody away, said Metallica’s Lars Ulrich in a press release. “I’ve watched with excitement his career in Hollywood blossom over the last few years. Within five minutes of meeting him I was addicted to his enthusiasm, his take on the creative process and his ‘thinking outside of the box’ personality. Let’s get on with it!!!”
The release describes the effort to be “a marriage of narrative and concert,” to begin shooting in August and for release in the summer of 2013. That means there probably won’t be crew on site at Orion, which takes place in June.
We’ll see what this feature director can bring to the table with documentary footage.
This, of course, is not the first time Metallica has been the main subject on-film: gripping band-drama doc “Some Kind of Monster” was released in 2004.