The film, an adaption of the band’s collaborative autobiography The Dirt (2001), stars rapper Machine Gun Kelly as Tommy Lee. Iwan Rheon, Daniel Webber and Douglas Booth portray guitarist Mick Mars, singer Vince Neil and bassist Nikki Sixx respectively. A collaboration between Kelly and Mötley Crüe is slated for release “very soon”, according to Sixx via a Twitter Q and A.
The new trailer sets up what looks to be a fairly true adaption of the book’s rise and fall narrative, teasing coverage of the infamous hotel TV throwing incident and Neil’s vehicular manslaughter/drunk-driving charges. Whether it will include Lee’s admitted history of domestic violence remains to be seen.
The film adaption comes as a surprise to fans, after the band had shut down offers to adapt the book of the same name for nearly two decades.
“Anybody can make a shitty rock movie. We don’t want to do that,” Sixx told Classic Guitar magazine in 2015.
All four members of Mötley Crüe are creduted as co-producers, continuing the trend set by N.W.A and Queen in recent years for music biopics with Straight Outta Compton and Bohemian Rhapsody respectively.
In an interview with Billboard, Kelly said The Dirt was his “Bible” when he was 13 years old, though says his feelings toward the band’s behaviour have since changed.
“When you’re 13, you don’t really understand problems too much, so you’re just looking at all the things that glitter. It wasn’t until we were on set and doing these scenes that we were like, “Whoa, this is dark. What are people going to think about this?” But there’s something about the truth in that book — the fact that you do fall in love with these people [who] then do this giant nose dive into this dark place,” Kelly said.
The Dirt is set for a worldwide Netflix release of March 22nd this year.
