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Ever since Jonathan Demme’s Talking Heads film “Stop Making Sense” picked up its reputation as the best concert movie of all time, David Byrne has kept designing dazzling tours, and prominent directors have kept wanting
to capture them. Following Spike Lee’s film rendering of Byrne’s “American Utopia” road show six years ago, now another name filmmaker is bringing the musician’s acclaimed 2025-26 “Who is the Sky?” tour to the big screen — and in large-format cinematography.
Director Brady Corbet, director of “The Brutalist,” is now in postproduction on the new Byrne concert film. And while he did not shoot in VistaVision, as he did on his previous narrative feature, he was still thinking big, shooting the film in a combination of 8-perf and 15-perf 70mm.
“When Brady told me he wanted to shoot our show in 70 millimeter (70 millimeter!) I didn’t realize what a difference it would make until I saw some frames he sent me,” Byrne said in a statement. “He was right, it really does capture the widescreen visual scope of the show. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Reps for the film do not yet have distribution or release details to reveal, including whether there are plans or hopes to place the film largely in 70mm engagements. A media announcement says the movie was shot over multiple nights at the Hippodrome in the artist’s hometown, Baltimore. Shows took place there in May, records show, with attendees noting on social at the time the presence of a filming team.
The film is being produced by The Deep End Films with Pre-Code, Corbet’s company, along with Mona Fastvold, and presented by River Road Entertainment. Its producers are Amit Dey and Jason Fine, representing The Deep End; Corbet and Maddie Browning, with Pre-Code; and Byrne. Executive Producers are River Road’s Bill Pohlad, Andrew van Wyk and Michael Overman; The Deep End’s Meredith and Martin Sumner; and Townhouse Media’s Sam Fayed & Adam Gibbs.
Representing Corbet and Pre-Code are Range Media Partners and CAA. Global distribution rights are in play with Byrne’s film agents at the Gersh Agency, along with The Deep End.
The Deep End’s credits include an attention-getting line of recent music-related film projects, including “Sly Lives!,” “The Sparks Brothers,” “The Greatest Night in Pop,” “Little Richard: I Am Everything” and “Brian Wilson’s Long Promised Road,” the last of which featured Fine as the Beach Boys legend’s on-screen interlocutor.
“I am so grateful to David Byrne and his entire team for entrusting us to capture his hometown show on 8-perf and 15-perf 70mm,” Corbet said in a statement. “The band’s performance is an inclusive celebration of community, and of Baltimore in particular—one of America’s most underappreciated historic cities.”
Although you would hardly call it a concert film, “Vox Lux,” which preceded “The Brutalist,” did at least find Corbet loosely working in a music milieu for a dramatic feature The director’s next project after completing the Byrne film is “Origin of the World,” shooting later this year with stars Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender and Selena Gomez.
News of the forthcoming movie arrives as Byrne heads into the final North American stretch of a tour that began last September. After previously bringing the show to the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood last November, Byrne is returning to L.A. this weekend for concerts Friday and Saturday at the Hollywood Bowl. After heading south for five nights in Mexico, the tour will then move to the east coast for its final show Sept. 19 at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens.
Variety raved about Byrne’s tour last year, ultimately naming his Dolby show the best of 2025 in a year-end best concerts list. “Whatever innovations may go down in the concert business, it rarely feels like the wheel is being entirely reinvented — until you go to a David Byrne show,” the recap said.
The review noted the unusual nature of the setup, in which all of the musicians on stage are in constant choreographed movement in front of the elaborate LED screens throughout the concert. “Fans going into his ‘Who Is the Sky?’ shows already had some idea of just how untethered to tour norms these concerts might be, based on the previous round of touring that was captured in the ‘American Utopia’ documentary,” Variety wrote. “But everything about his 2025 outing seemed ratcheted up to transport us somewhere that felt a lot more magical than any description you could possibly come up with for an intimate yet dazzling mixture of dance, rock and multi-media wizardry. The show’s musicians traveled about the stage with as much cordless choreography as the dancers, on a wrap-around LED set that was about as impressive in its transportable way as Las Vegas’ Sphere. It’s a tour that’s high-tech but even higher-human, with the troupe’s sounds and movement making every nerve ending you’ve got feel suddenly newly receptive to joy and possibility. The most common sentiment we heard in the lobby? ‘That was the best concert I’ve seen in years.'”
