Shout It Out has been in the works for quite some time. It was first set up at Netflix in 2021 with director Joachim Rønning. McG came aboard last year, with Deadline reporting that Lionsgate was now in talks to distribute. It doesn’t sound like a distribution deal has been set yet, but STX is fully financing the feature. Stanley, his KISS co-writer Gene Simmons, and the band’s longtime manager Don McGhee all serve as producers on the flick.
Things may have changed over the last few years of development, but in 2021 McGhee shared on a podcast that the biopic is “about the first four years” of the band. “Basically, it’s before they were famous—it was up to Cadillac High, that kind of thing,” McGhee said (via Loudwire). “And I think it’s a very interesting look at the formation of KISS, the mindset of how that came about, the social pressure that everybody was in in the ’60s and ’70s that brought something like KISS to the forefront, that it could actually happen. So it’s a very interesting, and I think it’s a well-written movie.”
Speaking about casting during his own podcast appearance (also via Loudwire), Stanley said at the time that he was hoping “For casting to be accurate in terms of age,” hoping for someone in their early 20s. “When people get asked these kinds of questions, they’ll say, ‘Oh, Brad Pitt,’ or this one or that one. Well, those guys are in their 50s or 60s, so you’re talking about another generation of actors,” Stanley said years before Nick Jonas came aboard. “And I’m the first to say I’m not up on a lot of them. But as the casting process goes on, I’ll certainly be there and watching. It’ll be interesting to see how … the casting people or the director … view who I am and who they see doing that. I think I’ll learn a lot about their perception of me by who they cast.” Wonder what it says about Stanley that they cast a 32-year-old Jonas Brother!
