The film was inspired by band’s early days before Dookie came out
They could be the “Anal O.G. Dogs” or they could be the “Analog Dogs,” but either way doesn’t matter since these teens got the improbable opportunity to open for Green Day on New Year’s Eve based on a demo tape. That’s the gist of the trailer for Nimrods: A Green Day Comedy, a road-trip movie in which not everything goes smoothly. It opens Aug. 14. Filmmaker Lee Kirk, who wrote and directed the picture, based the story on Green Day’s salad days when they toured in a van before Dookie made them world famous.
“It’s about the experience that Green Day had on the road in the early days of more of a DIY spirit,” Armstrong told The Hollywood Reporter last September when the film premiered with the title New Years Rev at the Tribeca Film Festival. “We played anywhere and everywhere, and a lot of shows would get shut down because the cops would come. But there’s also the mud fight that happened at Woodstock. Lee did a great job of incorporating all of those elements that we’ve had in the past.”
The film stars Mason Thames, Kylr Coffman, Ryan Foust, and Mckenna Grace, and, of course, Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tré Cool are in it. Jenna Fischer, Angela Kinsey, and Fred Armisen, among others, also make appearances.
“I’ve always wanted to do a Green Day film,” Armstrong told The Hollywood Reporter. “God, ever since the beginning, just all my heroes have always done films, whether it was Rock ‘n’ Roll High School by the Ramones or [the Beatles’] A Hard Day’s Night, the Who’s Quadrophenia. I just wanted to do the same thing.” In 2025, Armstrong also said he hoped a film adaptation of Broadway musical American Idiot would be possible.
