Universal Pictures is preparing a Bon Jovi biopic, Deadline has confirmed.
The feature film will focus on the rock band’s early years, tracing their rise from modest beginnings in New Jersey to sold-out stadiums as one of the most defining rock bands of the 1980s.
The film will be produced by Kevin J Walsh (Manchester By The Sea, House of Gucci) and Gotham Chopra, who directed the 2024 four-part documentary Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story. Los Angeles writer Cody Brotter will pen the script.
Bon Jovi has sold more than 130 million albums and the band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2018 to celebrate their enormous impact on rock music throughout their multi-decade career.
Jon Bon Jovi, born Jon Bongiovi in the small town of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, grew up in a blue-collar home and began playing music after receiving an electric guitar as a Christmas gift when he was 13 years old. “When you’re that age, everyone thinks you’re going to be a rock’n’roll star and really make it,” he told The Guardian in 2024. “I was dumb enough to believe it.”
As a teenager, Bon Jovi worked as an assistant at the Power Station recording studio in New York and was transfixed by the musicians who appeared, such as Mick Jagger and Diana Ross. After releasing Slippery When Wet in 1986, Bon Jovi became rock superstars and topped the US charts with a string of number one hits, including Livin’ On a Prayer and You Give Love a Bad Name.
The film will cover the band’s formation and climax with their supernova hit in the 1980s, when Bon Jovi became a must-see live act, performing in front of 100,000 fans at the 1989 Moscow Peace Music Festival.
Chopra’s documentary Thank You, Goodnight tracks the band’s highs, as well as subsequent lows, including the band members’ addiction issues and Jon Bon Jovi undergoing vocal surgery that threatened to end his singing career. The Guardian’s Jack Seale praised the project as “a surprisingly devastating reflection on lost youth.”
In a 2025 interview, Jon Bon Jovi said he had been mulling over who he would like to play him in a biopic after watching Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere. The rock singer said his best option was his son Jake Bongiovi, an actor who starred alongside Kiernan Shipka in the 2024 romantic comedy Sweethearts.
Casting details have yet to be announced.
