Earlier this year, Metallica spilled the beans on an up-and-coming project involving a live concert and state-of-the-art 3D technology…and according to the notorious loud mouth Lars Ulrich, “if it’s done right, it can be sensational”.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Ulrich and fellow bandmates explain that this will be the summer of firsts. “Variety is the spice of life”, according to the drummer, explaining the premise behind the film, which is set to include live footage broken up with documentary style footage of the band, spanning their 30-year career.
“This has been circling for two years… It’s time to life-size it, get it out of our minds and on the screen. And if it’s done right, it can be sensational. You’re not watching Metallica onstage. You’re onstage with Metallica.”
Ulrich, who caught the acting bug after featuring in a made-for-TV film earlier this month, seems very involved in the idea: “In IMAX, James Hetfield is 38 feet tall, snotting on you, spitting on you. It’s 2,000 decibels. If there is an earthquake outside, you wouldn’t notice. But you can’t do that for 100 minutes. It loses its appeal… There is another element in there – intimate, small, a story that takes place over the same trajectory as the concert.”
Frontman James Hetfield seemed a little less enthusastic about the idea, commenting: “[The budget is] ungodly. It’s our life savings, basically. We don’t know what the hell we’re doing. But we know we want to try”. When asked what he personally thought of 3D films, he responded with: “You think Pixar. You think hokey-ness. Our intention is to make something that is completely insane and blows minds. I also want a storyline. I want this to be a cult-type film. It’s kind of silly, talking so in-depth about it when I don’t know what it even is yet.”
The band, who have begun working on a new album as well as their own festival, have been busy expanding their horizons. Hopefully, there isn’t as much crying as there was in Some Kind Of Monster, their previous documentary.
