The Weezer movie has added more star power into the mix, with actor and musician Jack Black reportedly joining the cast.
News of Black’s involvement in the forthcoming film was confirmed by Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo himself, who took to the band’s Discord server to share an AI-generated image of a film poster featuring Black. Cuomo clearly expected backlash and disbelief, however, captioning his image by stating, “Nope, it’s real.”
Black’s appearance isn’t entirely unexpected, of course. Black previously toured with Weezer in 2001 as a member of Tenacious D, while wife Tanya Haden was the cellist on Weezer’s cover of Green Day’s “Worry Rock” in 2003.
News of Weezer’s film was officially confirmed earlier this month during the band’s appearance at Coachella, with Cuomo revealing the band had been working on it in Los Angeles in the preceding weeks.
A report from entertainment journalist Jeff Sneider claimed that the film is something of a mockumentary in the same vein as Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. Reportedly directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman of the Paranormal Activity series, names such as Eric Andre, Johnny Knoxville, Juliette Lewis and Ben Schwartz have all been listed as part of the cast.
Sneider also reported that Keanu Reeves has been cast as a villain in the film. Much like their association with Black, Weezer and Reeves have a decades-long relationship, extending to the band’s first public performance in 1992 which saw them opening for Reeves’ own rock outfit Dogstar.
While few details have been officially released by Weezer themselves, it makes them the third Californian band to be the focus of an off-kilter film project in recent years. While Stockton’s Pavement are set to be the focus of the genre-defying Pavements from director Alex Ross Perry, Rodeo trio Green Day are in the process of filming New Years Rev, which is inspired by the group and their years of living in a tour van.
