When does the Weird Al Yankovic movie come out in US cinemas?
A fictional biography of the world’s top-selling comedy musician will be released this year and its creators have decided to make it available for free.
‘Weird Al’ Yankovic is the world’s best-selling comedy musician and one of very few stars to have recorded hit songs from the 1980s through to the present day. The extraordinary story of the music industry outsider is being told in a new movie set to be released later this year called ‘Weird: The Al Yankovic Story’.
Officially announced in January 2022 and co-written by the man himself, the film stars Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe in the title role. The film is directed by Eric Appel, who is also responsible for some of the writing, and is a fittingly bizarre fictional account of Weird Al’s rise to fame.
The film is scheduled to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Thursday 8 September. It will then be released exclusively on the free-to-air streaming service The Roku Channel from Friday, 4 November.
The film boasts an impressive cast with Evan Rachel Wood, Rainn Wilson, Quinta Brunson and Julianna Nicholson starring alongside Radcliffe. However there are currently no plans for the film to be released in cinemas, with the creators preferring instead to make it available for free from the outset.
Who is Weird Al Yankovic?
Alfred Matthew Yankovic got his first break in the world of entertainment when his homemade tapes were played on the Dr Demento Radio Show in his teenage years. His first comedy song aired in 1976 but it was in 1979 when his career really kicked off, when he made a parody of The Knack’s ‘My Sharona’, changing the title to ‘My Bologna’.
Off the back of that he signed a six-month recording contract and went on to record ‘Another One Rides the Bus,’ a parody of the Queen hit ‘Another One Bites the Dust.”
In the 1980s he began touring with his band and achieved a series of Top 40 hits, and released his first self-title album on Scotti Bros. Later that decade he released a second studio album, ‘Weird Al Yankovic in 3-D’, and co-wrote and starred in a mockumentary of his own life.
His new movie released this year is a similarly fictional account of his life, charting his rise from suburban frustration to international stardom. As such the film details some less-than-accurate moments from Yankovic’s life, including an apparent romance with Madonna which raised eyebrows when the trailer was released this month.
Speaking to The New York Times about the role, Radcliffe revealed that the filming ranked amongst one of his strangest acting experiences:
“I did one shot the other day and Al walked up to me afterward and was like, ‘Is this the weirdest thing you’ve ever had to do?’ I was like, ‘It’s top two, with the only other thing being Paul Dano riding me like a jet ski at the beginning of Swiss Army Man.’”
Weird, indeed.