Green Day’s 2004 album American Idiot was turned into an unlikely hit on Broadway in 2010, and now the musical is headed to the small screen as an HBO movie.
Band frontman Billie Joe Armstrong, who appeared in the early run of the stage production, confirmed this week that the movie based on American Idiot has been in development for several years, and is finally moving forward at the cable network. Armstrong also confirmed that he plans to reprise his role from the stage version of American Idiot in the movie.
“That’s the plan right now, yeah,” Armstrong told NME when asked whether he still planned to bring the show from stage to screen. “We’ve got a green light from HBO, and the script is currently going through a couple of rewrites here and there, so I’m not sure when exactly we’re going to start shooting, but it’s definitely all systems go at the moment.”
The winner of two Tony Awards and a Grammy Award, the American Idiot musical follows a trio of friends who grapple with their desire to leave suburban life and responsibilities behind them, and the experiences they have after two of them move to the city while the other remains in their hometown with his pregnant girlfriend. In various performances of the musical, Armstrong played the role of an imaginary, sketchy alter ego named St. Jimmy that one of the characters creates in order to deal with his emotional state.
The book for the musical was penned by Armstrong and the musical’s director, Michael Mayer, and featured all of the songs from the album and several new songs created specifically for the stage production.
Weeds and Friday Night Lights writer Rolin Jones was identified as the film’s screenwriter in 2013. A few years earlier, Tom Hanks had expressed interest in producing the American Idiot movie, but it is uncertain whether Hanks will be involved in the HBO iteration of the project.
