Moonage Daydream, the new Brett Morgan movie about the rock legend David Bowie, will premier at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. The film is presented by Neon and HBO Documentary Films.
Last November, Variety published the first news about Moonage Daydream. A source told the publication that the film is “neither a documentary nor a biography, but an immersive cinematic experience based, in part, on thousands of hours of never-before-seen footage.”
Morgen, who directed Cobain: Montage of Heck before, says that the new movie took five years to be prepared. Morgen said he has been a Bowie fan for a long time. “When I was 11 or 12, I began asking myself, ‘Why am I different?’ It was then I first discovered David Bowie. He showed me it was ok to be myself. That my differences are my strengths. That was radical then. Now, it’s mainstream. That is why David Bowie is the perfect star for this moment.”
This is Morgen’s first major feature film since his acclaimed Nat Geo documentary on primatologist Jane Goodall. In 2017, Jane won two Primetime Emmy Awards and other prizes. Several in the non-fiction world viewed its exclusion as a major upset (Netflix’s Russian doping scandal film Icaruswon the documentary Oscar that year.)
Morgen also won praise for the Sundance premiere of Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck. This documentary detailed the life of the Nirvana frontman through to his suicide in 1994.
Moreover, The global music publishing rights to Bowie’s song catalog were purchased by Warner Chappell Music earlier this year for nearly $250 million, and over 400 songs from his six-decade-long catalog have been acquired.