It feels more like Stairway to Hell than to Heaven with Becoming Led Zepplin as this film has been in a production merry-go-round for quite some time.
Firstly, there wasn’t enough footage from the band’s early days so BAFTA-nominated director Bernard MacMahon and BAFTA-nominated producer Allison McGourty went on a 5-year travel mission to locate lost archive footage.
Photographs, archive footage and recordings have all been salvaged and put into IMAX format so they sound as though they were just processed at the lab yesterday.
It’s going to be quite the experience!
Becoming Led Zeppelin explores the origins of this iconic group and their meteoric rise in just one year against all the odds. Powered by awe-inspiring, psychedelic, never-before-seen footage, performances, and music, Bernard MacMahon’s experiential cinematic odyssey explores Led Zeppelin’s creative, musical, and personal origin story. The film is told in Led Zeppelin’s own words and is the first officially sanctioned film on the group.
Interviews with the three surviving members certainly give the documentary that official stamp of approval and after a merry-go-round with selling the film to a distributor everything has finally come together.
Keep in mind the original documentary had a premiere in 2021 in Venice but the film was then re-edited to add further footage so hopefully now we get the polished product and all is well in the world.
No UK distributor has been announced at this moment in time but Sony Pictures Classics have swooped in for a US release. That deal happened in May whereas more deals were announced in June with the UK not being one of them.
The documentary is getting a very limited IMAX release though however on Feb 5 & 6 and will then be in cinemas everywhere from Feb 7.
If you’re going to watch any documentary about a band then IMAX is the format you need to see and hear it in. IMAX does take action-packed blockbusters or any loud sound blockbuster or feature to new heights. It’s truly an incredible experience and Zeppelin fans are going to love this in this particular format.
Check out the trailer for Becoming Led Zeppelin below:
