Matt Sorum Aims to Bring Guns N’ Roses Biopic to Big Screen

Ex-Guns N’ Roses drummer Matt Sorum reveals that he is in talks to write the screenplay for a Guns N’ Roses biopic. The real question is — will it ever make it to theaters?

With all the renewed interest surrounding Guns N’ Roses after their much-hyped Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction — it would be the perfect time to bring the band’s story to the big screen. Matt Sorum tells Vh1 that the ball is already rolling on such a project. “I’ve talked about doing a screenplay and that’s actually something that I’m in talks about with a couple of pretty big people,” says Sorum. “The only problem with that is figuring out how to work out the music situation.”

Sorum is right. The rights to the music always play a major role in whether music biopics ever make it to theaters or not. One example of the latter being a long-planned Jimi Hendrix film that has flat-lined repeatedly after filmmakers failed to acquire the rights to use his music in the film. Given all the hands in the GN’R royalties pot and Axl Rose’s resistance to anything regarding the band’s history — the business side of the movie may kill the project before it even gets off the ground.

“If you look at rock and roll movies, they’ve never been done right,” says Sorum. “The only ones that I actually thought were decent were ‘The Doors’ movie, [which] I thought was decent and I liked the Johnny Cash film ['Walk the Line']. If you look at any of those other kind of traditional rock flicks, like Mark Wahlberg and ‘Rock Star’ and all those, they’re all kind of dumb.”

All the roadblocks that could potentially kill the project aside, a Guns N’ Roses biopic has all the makings of a great rock and roll film — substance abuse problems, decadence, internal strife and, most impotantly, great music. “The thing about Guns N’ Roses that was different than all the butt rock bands in Hollywood was that it was down and dirty and punk rock and real,” notes Sorum. “They want to try to lump it in with hair metal, it never was because it was a different kind of energy. There was a much sort of more street, dark undercurrent happening that could be great on film.”

Motley Crue, another band to come out of the Sunset Strip (and possibly one of the “butt rock” bands Sorum refers to), first put their exploits in literary form with ‘The Dirt.’ Now that tell-all is being turned into a film with hopes of a 2013 release, so it’s not impossible that GN’R could do the same. But then again, the Crue have a much better relationship with each other than the members of Guns N’ Roses do.