The ‘Becoming Led Zeppelin’ documentary is finally set to hit cinemas.
Bernard MacMahon’s long-awaited flick, which documents the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ rockers’ “meteoric rise to stardom”, has been acquired by Sony Classics Pictures in North America, Latin America, Southeast Asia (except for Japan) and the Middle East.
There is still no news regarding the UK and Europe, and an actual release date is yet to be confirmed, but the doc is completed now.
The film – which was first announced in 2019 – has changed since a rough cut was aired at Venice Film Festival in 2021.
According to Variety, it now boasts “a brand-new sound mix (and) newly unearthed material from the archives of all four band members.”
The filmmaker had said in a press release: “’Becoming Led Zeppelin’ is a film that no one thought could be made. The band’s meteoric rise to stardom was swift and virtually undocumented. Through an intense search across the globe and years of restoration of the visual and audio archive found, this story is finally able to be told.”
Fans can expect “unprecedented access” to the band, in what marks “the first and only time they have participated in a documentary in 50 years.”
The documentary includes new interviews with Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones, plus archive footage of the late John Bonham – who tragically passed away in 1980, aged just 32, after he choked to death on his own vomit.
In 2007, Jimmy, Robert, John Paul, and late original drummer John’s son Jason got back together for a one-off show at London’s O2 arena as part of a tribute to late Atlantic Record President Ahmet Ertegun, and guitarist Jimmy revealed they had initially planned to do more than just a single show, but further dates just never materialised.
Robert, meanwhile, was adamant a tour hasn’t been discussed since, and he has ruled it out from ever happening again.
He said: “But then there has not been any discussion about any tour ever since – nor will there be. So there you go. It’s just one of those weird, odd things in the world of Led Zeppelin, really, another part of the Led Zeppelin phenomenon.”