Mick Jagger has admitted that the idea of a big-screen Rolling Stones biopic “interests” him.
The legendary frontman was asked about the possibility of the band receiving the biopic treatment in a new interview with GQ, in the context of Sam Mendes’ upcoming four-film Beatles project.
“Yeah, it interests me,” Jagger replied when asked whether a similar treatment for the Stones would appeal to him.
“I don’t want to impart it to you, but, I know how I see it,” he continued. “There’s lots of ways of doing biopics. So most of the time when you do a biopic, you do one small section of someone’s life bookended by some other stuff.”
Jagger then pointed to the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, which starred Timothée Chalamet and focused on Dylan’s early years in New York and his controversial move from folk to electric music.
“Take the Bob Dylan movie,” Jagger said. “You do the moment when Bob went electric. You’d have to think, what are you going to zero in on? And where’s your two years of interest? I mean that Bob Dylan one was two years, [the] James Brown one that I produced was slightly more.”
Asked which section of The Rolling Stones’ history he would choose, Jagger added: “I don’t know which section, because it’s a long period.”
The James Brown film Jagger referred to was 2014’s Get On Up, which starred Chadwick Boseman as the Godfather Of Soul and was directed by Tate Taylor. Jagger produced the film alongside Brian Grazer, Taylor and Victoria Pearman, while Nick Eversman played Jagger in a small role.
In NME’s four-star review of A Complete Unknown, Alex Flood wrote: “If you’re a Bob newbie, you’ll leave the cinema ready to dive into his back catalogue. If you’re already a fan, the next few weeks will be spent making playlists of lesser-known B-sides or reading the lore around a scene you weren’t familiar with. And that’s why it was a good idea to make this film – a mad idea, but a good one.”
There have been rumours about a Rolling Stones film over the years, and in 2012, Richard Branson’s Virgin acquired the rights to Robert Greenfield’s book Exile On Main Street: A Season In Hell With The Rolling Stones, with plans to turn the story of the chaotic 1971 sessions in the South of France into a feature film.
The project resurfaced in 2016, when Downton Abbey and Daredevil director Andy Goddard was attached to direct, with reports at the time saying actors were being sought to play late-’20s versions of Jagger and Keith Richards. The film never came to fruition.
Harry Styles was also widely rumoured to be playing Jagger at one point, and Zack Snyder told NME in 2023 that Jagger would be his dream biopic subject. The director said he had long been fascinated by the challenge of capturing Jagger on screen, adding: “His voice is iconic.”
Jagger has his own long history in film, having starred in Nicolas Roeg’s Performance in 1970, as well as Ned Kelly, Freejack and The Burnt Orange Heresy. He also co-created and executive-produced HBO’s 1970s music-industry drama Vinyl with Martin Scorsese.
Jagger’s comments come ahead of the release of The Rolling Stones’ new album ‘Foreign Tongues’, which is due out on July 10. The band have also announced an official podcast companion to the record.
