METALLICA's 3D Movie To Be Shopped, Screened At CANNES Film Festival

According to Variety, METALLICA's upcoming IMAX 3D movie, "Metallica Through The Never", will be shopped and screened at this year's Cannes film festival, the world's most important cinema showcase, by Nigel Sinclair and Guy East's international sales company Exclusive Media.

"After wading through multiple international distribution options for our film, we are excited to be partnering up with the folks at Exclusive Media, who we feel understand METALLICA and understand our film better than anyone else," METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich said in a statement. "Throw in the cherry-on-top, launching our international sales with a couple of screenings at the film market during a little up-and-coming film festival in Cannes, and it feels like we're off to a pretty rockin' start."

The first image from "Metallica Through The Never" was published by Entertainment Weekly. The photo shows the main character, a METALLICA crew member played by Dane DeHaan, standing against a backdrop of flames and what appears to be an angry mob of fans. In the story, DeHaan is assigned with carrying out a mysterious task for the band as they perform at a local arena. Producer Charlotte Huggins described the film as "a dramatic movie in which a concert takes place."

Huggins added that the two shows filmed for the movie — along with their elaborate stage production — were done by METALLICA solely for the film, explaining, "It took me seven months of working with METALLICA until I grasped that they had created this very complex, very elaborate show just for our film. After we were done, that entire stage got packed up and put away."

In addition to DeHaan and the band, the movie features thousands of the group's fans, with Huggins saying, "Lars, James, Kirk and Robert always consider fans the fifth member of the band. Because it's a 360-degree arena show, the fans are in every frame."
"Metallica Through The Never" will open in limited release on September 27. The film will play for one week exclusively in IMAX theaters in North America before expanding into additional theaters on October 4.

Dane DeHaan's acting credits include "Chronicle", "The Place Beyond The Pines" and 2014's "The Amazing Spider-Man 2".

Speaking to Collider.com, DeHaan stated about "Metallica Through The Never": "It's, in a way, like a 3D concert movie but there's also this narrative that ties together all the footage. It's gonna be, first of all, really rock and roll and really 'METALLICA,' for lack of a better word; they don't hold back at all. But during the concert, I basically go on this trip as a roadie for the band and I pretty much literally have to go through hell and back to take it back to them, and all of this is going on during the concert, so it all ties together really kind of beautifully and uniquely. It's unlike anything that I've ever seen before; it's almost like a concert movie meets 'The Wall' meets METALLICA."

"Metallica Through The Never" is directed by Nimród Antal, who also directed "Vacancy" and "Predators".

Next up for METALLICA is the second edition of its annual Orion Music + More festival, which is scheduled to take place on June 8-9 in Detroit.

The concert sequences for METALLICA's movie were shot last August at two shows in Vancouver, Canada.