Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie debuted at the 2025 SXSW Film Festival to widespread acclaim, immediately cementing itself as one of the highest-rated comedies of the decade so far. Following best friends Matt and Jay (Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol) as they embark on yet another scheme to get a show at the Rivoli, this time having unintended sci-fi consequences.

Ahead of Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie’s theatrical release, FandomWire had the opportunity to speak with the film’s creators and stars, Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol, about their unique approach to filmmaking, making a movie for everyone rather than just the fans, and what we can expect in the future from Nirvanna the Band.

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie Interview

So even though you’ve gotten mainstream success and bigger budgets, you’ve not abandoned your indie roots, as can obviously be seen in this film. What do you appreciate most about this approach to filmmaking?

Matt Johnson: Well, that’s a huge topic of conversation, so I’ll just talk about one level of it, and that is that its level of challenge is always meeting us right at the edge of our ability. And that maybe sounds strange or complicated, but what I’m saying is we are always able to be right at the very tip of what we can accomplish, and it will meet us there.

So when we were kids making Nirvanna the Band the Show, it was like the ceiling was so low because all we needed to do was go out and film things, and there wasn’t a lot of technical difficulty to making this story. And it got to grow with us. So as we became more technically talented — that’s the wrong word — but as our writing got better, as Jared’s shooting got better, as Kurt took over as the editor and started doing more interesting things how we could edit, as we got a better understanding of American law and fair use, it grows with us.

It has an organic difficulty setting. If you play the game Hades — do you know this game? Once you beat this game, whether Hades one or Hades II, they have something called heat, and it’s basically like you get to add difficulty to it, but as you add difficulty, your rewards go up. 

And I think that’s a great analogy to Nirvanna the Band. It’s an extremely simple premise in the same way that Hades is a simple premise — you’re just going around the underworld killing bad guys — but you can add all of these difficulties outside it that grow along with you. So, in my opinion, the horizon is endless. You could keep making this forever, and the specific changes of our own personal lives or whatever happens winds up being incorporateable into the project.

One of the things I love most about this film is that I’ve seen it with people who are mega fans, and I’ve seen it with people who have never seen the show, and it works for both. How did you find this balance between making a movie that has all these in-jokes for people who love the show and making something accessible for people who haven’t?

Johnson: I think we don’t really focus on making things that are inside jokes and have those things just happen by happenstance. I think that Nirvanna the Band needs to always cater to whatever the lowest common denominator is, and by that, I mean the person with the least information.

Jay McCarrol: That’s what makes a good movie or a good episode of TV. It’s not an inside joke game. If you’re telling a movie that sits with itself, it does need to start somewhere and introduce itself and stand alone and stand on its own two feet.

Johnson: But we also recognize — we know it’s so complicated and repulsive as a project that we need to make it as simple and digestible as we possibly can because it already has so much going against it in terms of an audience actually being willing to sit down and watch it. That if we were to try to make it cryptic or, for the lack of a better word, pretentious, on top of that, it would just be impossible. It would be like a student film.

Related: Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie SXSW Review — Pure Comedic Brilliance

So Jay, when you’re writing an original comedy song like the earworm of a pop tune, it has to be funny, but it also has to be believably good. You have to believe it would become a radio hit. Which comes first? The funny or the good?

McCarrol: The song was written to sound like a hit song. The song was written pretty much as a joke song, and people were telling me, “Hey, you know you’re presenting this like it’s a joke, but it’s actually pretty good.” And that was the mission success. But yeah, it was just supposed to sound like a really quick two and a half minute electro pop jam, and that’s what we did.

And in addition to the original music, there’s some clever use of source music, like the Back to the Future theme or “Waters of March.” What’s your process like in choosing when to use source music and what to use?

McCarrol: Well, all of the needle drops — the songs that are used — they’re all chosen from all of us. And Matt always has great picks. Like when we were searching for an ending song for that whole ending sequence, that ending sequence exists before a song is placed. And a few of us with the editors are watching different “auditions” of songs that we think are good. 

And when Matt found “Waters of March,” it’s an example of one of those rounds of high fives that we do because it just feels right. And our group making this is always in pretty good lockstep. When we sort of hear something, we just know it’s right, so that’s a really good indicator of how we all have a similar North Star in the sky.

And then yeah, I loved scoring the movie because I had the challenge of not being able to lean on any of the Back to the Future stuff. We couldn’t pull any of those parody law or fair use tricks for any of the Back to the Future stuff. So it was a bit of a blessing in disguise because I just loved doing it. I loved looking under the hood of Alan Silvestri’s score and deciphering as much musical code as I could.

And I thought it was going to end up being a lot more of a straight-up sound-alike. But what was really fun was I sort of started to find our motifs underscoring all the different parts of the movie, and it sort of became its own original thing that was spiritually feeling that old, nostalgic Hollywood lift of the orchestra, classic movie thing. So it was really fun to do.

So where I live in Austin, they’re doing fedora-themed screenings and a screening where mock Orbitz will be served. If you could make up an audience participation bit for Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, what would it be?

Johnson: I think what the Alamo is doing is actually about as good as it can get in terms of Nirvanna the Band screenings. And you know what? I knew this was going to be the case when we were down there because the screenings that we did at the South Lamar Alamo were just so unreal. And I’ll tell you a bit of history: I came to Fantastic Fest with three episodes of the TV show and we screened those there, not really thinking anything, and we won the Audience Award. There’s something about Austin and the Alamo and Nirvanna the Band that is such a perfect fit. 

That’s not answering your question. But to me, audience participation goes into two categories: one for people who are like really fans of the show, and one for people who are just watching this for the very first time. And I think those are two very different audiences. And I think if you’re watching it for the first time, it would be something about 2008 trivia. It would be about spotting the things that are from 2008.

But for fans of the show, I mean, you could just be calling out the inside jokes that you’re seeing, things that we hid in the show, characters that are the same. But it’s funny, Jay and I consider ourselves Nirvanna the Band fans. So when we’re watching these things, we’re not watching them as though we made them; we’re watching them being like, “Oh my god, what are these guys going to do? What’s going to happen to them next?” So, thinking of what I would like in a situation like that is hard.

McCarrol: I mean, even though every iteration of Nirvanna the Band uses this less and less, I love the piano. I think the piano is a big mainstay, so I would love people to go up in pairs and there be a piano there and just do their best and open up and be silly. That’s how we started — we just started. So it would be pretty hilarious and have some interesting results.

Related: In the Blink of an Eye Director Andrew Stanton and Crew Talk the Ambitious Sci-Fi Triptych at Its Sundance Premiere

You mention the 2008 jokes. One of my favorites is the Hangover joke. Were there any jokes that were going to go in that place if it didn’t get cleared?

Johnson: That was not cleared.

McCarrol: There were a few others that we also did not clear and did not make it into the movie. But when we were trying to depict 2008, we were running out of things aesthetically, or the obvious ones — Obama, GTA IV, the BlackBerry, the iPad, or whatever. We were realizing we needed to dip a little more into the lifestyle, cultural changes, and language, so that was just a funny thing that happened in our brainstorming of different ways we could depict 2008, and we thought that would be a good final nail in the coffin for making us know where we are.

So obviously you guys have now worked on more traditional narrative projects like BlackBerry or Tony coming up. Compared to something with a less defined narrative structure like Nirvanna or Operation Avalanche, how do you approach these styles differently, and do you have one you prefer?

Johnson: Well, prefer from what point of view? Making movies is extremely challenging. I don’t know that it’s necessarily enjoyable to shoot this just because it’s like you’re going to war every day and it’s so stressful. You have to shoot for so long. And even when you do things, you still don’t know if you’ve done it because it’s like you’re wrestling with this gigantic creature and you have to fight until one of you gives up. So it’s unpleasant.

McCarrol: You have to bleed into this movie. Everybody who works on it needs to go above and beyond what is typically asked of people when you make a movie. My first time really digging into being involved with a movie that isn’t made like this was BlackBerry, and it was incredibly nourishing as somebody who just wants to get better at film to just sort of have to preload so much work and frontload the movie with a lot of decision-making because you only have one shot to do this. You only have this crew for this time, this talent for this time.

Nobody is being the sort of fire hall that the Nirvanna the Band team is for the movie. But it does teach you a lot because you have to grind it out to get it the best you can, and then the next movie, you’re that much better equipped.

In the US, the show is not available for a variety of practical reasons. Is there any chance of the show coming out again in the US?

Johnson: Yes, NEON is releasing it on physical media, I think, very soon. And I would say maybe not too unlikely that it gets a full release shortly after the movie does. I mean, if the movie gets any attention whatsoever, I would say I’m quite optimistic about it being fully released — the entire series — and hopefully season three in the United States.

And I know you’ve talked about this a little bit, but with season three coming up, you’ve said the last scene is kinda segueing into the third season.

Johnson: Yes, that’s true! That’s an episode in season three where you get to see — I mean, this will spoil certain things in the movie — but there is an episode in season three that closes the time loop that the movie sets up.

Is there anything else you’re excited for fans to see in season three?

McCarrol: Yes, we have some stuff that we had previously shot and never finished it, but the stuff did survive that is sequenced together is great. We’ve always been sitting on it very anxiously to show it, and how that’s going to kind of work with how we’re going to meet it now remains to be seen, but we have a lot of ideas. So one way or another, we’re going to be revealing this.

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie opens in theaters on February 13.

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