“We’re just starting it now,” KISS manager Doc McGhee confirmed of the upcoming Netflix biopic, tentatively titled Shout It Out.
A biographical film based on the rock band KISS is currently in production at Netflix, with a premiere date set for sometime next year. News of the biopic was confirmed by KISS’ manager Doc McGhee, who promised that the film would cover the band’s early origins and breakout years. “It’s a biopic about the first four years of KISS,” McGhee revealed in an interview on The Rock Experience with Mike Brunn.
“We’re just starting it now,” he added. “We’ve already sold it, it’s already done, we have a director… That’s moving along and that’ll come in [2024].” While a cast and director for the film — tentatively titled Shout It Out Loud in reference to the band’s 1976 Destroyer single — has yet to be announced, reports of a KISS biopic have bubbled since as early as 2021.
That year, KISS frontman Paul Stanley verified rumours that the band was closing on a deal with Netflix to distribute the film, with Pirates of the Caribbean director Joachim Rønning attached to direct. At the time, Stanley insisted on a cast of younger actors, as reflection of the biopic’s focus on KISS’ early days. “For casting to be accurate in terms of age, we are looking at actors in their early 20s,” the singer and guitarist told Download.
“As the casting process goes on, I’ll certainly be there and watching,” he added. Shout It Out Loud will add to an increasingly tiresome list of music biopics currently in the works in Hollywood, the most recent of which — Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis — arrived last year. Fellow musicians due for the biopic treatment include Amy Winehouse, Snoop Dogg, Bob Dylan and Billy Joel.
Earlier this year, the estate of the late George Michael denied reports of a film based on the singer’s life, following rumours that The White Lotus star Theo James was in talks to lead the cast. “It seems that mimicry of past icons is no longer the way to ensure an Oscars win,” Happy Mag wrote of the biopic genre following Elvis’ Oscars snub. “The sheer number of these films such as Rocketman, Bohemian Rhapsody, I Wanna Dance have been exhausting the genre of any originality.”
