Report: KISS's Official Biopic 'Shout It Out Loud' Gets New Director

According to Deadline, director Joseph McGinty Nichol, better known as McG, is in final negotiations to helm the upcoming KISS biopic "Shout It Out Loud", which will be produced by STX Entertainment. Lionsgate is in discussions to distribute the film worldwide and co-finance. Casting is said to be underway, with production set to start in the second quarter of 2025. The most recent draft of the script was written by Darren Lemke ("Shazam!", "Gemini Man").

"Shout It Out Loud" was previously set up at Netflix and was supposed to be directed by Joachim Rønning, the Norwegian filmmaker whose credits include "Kon-Tiki", "Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil" and "Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales".

Back in 2021, KISS's longtime manager Doc McGhee told Talking Metal that the script for "Shout It Out Loud" was "completely done… And the script is about the first four years of KISS," he said. "Basically, it's before they were famous — it was up to Cadillac High, that kind of thing," referring to the October 1975 concert KISS played in a high school gym in Cadillac, Michigan. "And I think it's a very interesting look at the formation of KISS, the mindset of how that came about, the social pressure that everybody was in in the '60s and '70s that brought something like KISS to the forefront, that it could actually happen. So it's a very interesting, and I think it's a well-written movie."

Earlier in 2021, KISS frontman Paul Stanley told Download host Kylie Olsson that the KISS biopic was "definitely happening. And that's gonna be really interesting," he said. "The script was really good. And we really waited until we felt comfortable.

Asked which actor he would like to play him in the movie, Stanley said: "And I will tell you this: for casting to be accurate in terms of age, we are looking at actors in their early 20s. Honestly, I don't know a whole lot of actors in their early 20s. When people get asked these kinds of questions, they'll say, 'Oh, Brad Pitt,' or this one or that one. Well, those guys are in their 50s or 60s, so you're talking about another generation of actors. And I'm the first to say I'm not up on a lot of them. But as the casting process goes on, I'll certainly be there and watching. It'll be interesting to see how someone else — be it the casting people or the director — how they view who I am and who they see doing that. I think I'll learn a lot about their perception of me by who they cast."

Stanley and Gene Simmons formed KISS in New York City in 1973 with fellow original members Ace Frehley and Peter Criss. Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer replaced Frehley and Criss on lead guitar and drums, respectively, for the last two decades of the band's touring career.

Although the original lineup off KISS wrapped its "Farewell Tour" in the spring of 2001, the most recent version of KISS kicked off the "End Of The Road" world tour nearly two decades later, which concluded last December with back-to-back concerts at Madison Square Garden in New York City.