Apple TV+ has unveiled the full-length trailer for Spike Jonze’s Beastie Boys Story. The footage is nearly 3 minutes-long and gives Beastie boys and girls a much better idea of what to expect. In late 2018, Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz and Michael “Mike D” Diamond released their long-awaited memoir and celebrated with some extremely limited live speaking gigs with their long-time DJ Mix Master Mike providing the soundtrack. Spike Jonze was in attendance at the first Los Angeles event and decided that they should collaborate on a documentary based on their live gigs. And largely, it seems that the bulk of the movie will be in that live documentary format.
According to the press release, Beastie Boys Story features Mike Diamond and Adam Horovitz as they “tell you an intimate, personal story of their band and 40 years of friendship in this live documentary experience directed by their longtime friend and collaborator, and loud chewer, filmmaker Spike Jonze.” Friendship was the basis of the book and the live stage show, all of it in tribute to Adam “MCA” Yauch, who sadly passed away in 2012, putting an end to the Beastie Boys as a touring and musically active group.
The Beastie Boys Story poster dropped earlier today. The movie is set to premiere on the heels of the 26th anniversary of the release of Beastie Boys’ No. 1 charting 1994 album, “Ill Communication,” and reunites Beastie Boys with director Spike Jonze over 25 years after directing the music video for the album’s immortal hit single, “Sabotage.” While the group worked with Jonze on the hit music video, they also did a ton of other smaller projects over the years, which is documented in the director’s first ever book, titled Beastie Boys by Spike Jonze. The book hits the shelves on April 14th.
For a good amount of time in the mid to late 1990s, Spike Jonze could have been the fourth Beastie Boy. He and Adam Yauch had an immediate connection with their loves of fake mustaches and terrible 70s TV shows, along with a passion for the absurd. In other words, Jonze was the right man for the job in bringing Beastie Boys Story to the big and small screens. On April 2nd, select IMAX theaters around North America will premiere the movie until the 4th. From there, fans will have to wait until April 24th to see the live documentary when it premieres on Apple TV+. Nathaniel Hornblower would be proud.
Beastie Boys Story is produced by Grammy Award winner Jason Baum, Amanda Adelson, alongside director and writer Spike Jonze, and executive produced by Mike Diamond, Adam Horovitz, Dechen Wangdu-Yauch, John Silva, John Cutcliffe, Peter Smith, Thomas Benski, Dan Bowen, Sam Bridger, Michele Anthony, David Blackman, Ashley Newton, Losel Yauch and Jonah Hill. The project is produced for Apple by Fresh Bread and Pulse Films in association with Polygram Entertainment. You can check out the full-length trailer for Beastie Boys Story above, thanks to the Apple TV YouTube channel.