Green Day is coming to a cinema near you – probably. The American punk rockers, whose brilliant protest album, American Idiot, has been flying off shelves since its release in October 2004, have announced plans to turn the concept album into a movie.
“We’re going to make a movie going along the story of American Idiot,” drummer Tre Cool told Xfm, a quote which was then picked up by nme.com, and then finally pilfered by us. “A rock opera. We need to go home, put some thought into it, talk to directors and writers and get the script together, stuff like that.
“I don’t think that I’m going to have to be in the film, because we’re making the movie and I wouldn’t do that to myself,” he added.
The album, a blisteringly angry potshot at the Bush administration, follows three characters – Saint Jimmy, Whatsername and the Jesus of Suburbia – as they make their way through disenfranchised American society. It’s not clear if the film will follow the album’s storyline closely, or what form the finished film will take. But Green Day's members vow that they won’t be in it.
“I’m not an actor at all,” said singer/guitarist, Billie Joe Armstrong. “I’d rather be behind the writing and the production, and leave the acting to the actors.”