If you’re bold enough to title your movie Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, you better have an experience that pays off on how difficult it is to remember what it’s even called. Luckily, creators Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol have not only managed to deliver one of the most unique and delightful buddy comedies of all time, but they’ve also managed to offer up an incredibly inventive time-travel movie. Despite the fun that Johnson and McCarrol seem to be having playing versions of themselves in the movie, pulling off the ordeal was as taxing as it is to say the name of the movie.
For the uninitiated, Johnson and McCarrol had a Canadian sketch-comedy web series entitled “Nirvana the Band,” which was then turned into the sitcom Nirvanna the Band the Show, both of which followed the hilarious exploits of the real-life friends. After two seasons, the pair pivoted to the feature film Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, which continues to explore their quest to play local Toronto venue the Rivoli. What makes The Movie slightly different, though, is that their exploits accidentally open up a rift in the space-time continuum, and they travel back to 2008.
Speaking with MovieWeb, the pair reflected on the project and how, even before landing on the final concept, they started filming various scripts that they would ultimately abandon. As far as what those scrapped projects were, Johnson detailed:
“The original version of the movie entirely took place in the United States. It was a road-trip movie and the only surviving piece of that is actually the RV. The reason we built a time machine out of an RV is because we already had the RV from the road-trip version of the movie.
“To put it simply, it really was a function of us watching that first iteration of the movie and realizing that, in terms of scope, it was so much closer to our TV series than what an ’80s action movie would be. It was a very challenging decision to make because we were making this movie on our own in Canada. We didn’t have any bosses, but we decided to completely redo it and release the first version of the movie as episodes of a TV show.”
An Evolving Experience
Much like how the narrative of the movie evolved from the original concept, even once the movie had been filmed and premiered at last year’s South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, the duo continued to make tweaks and edits along the way as they saw how audiences reacted to different sections. On how much the movie has evolved since its initial screenings, Johnson confirmed:
“I think that if you were in the audience at South by Southwest, and then you went to a theater, there is a chance that you would say literally nothing has changed. So, in some ways, I think that answers your question, but because you asked about it technically, I would say that, well, for one, the movie’s five minutes shorter. Any filmmaker will tell you, that’s an insane amount of changes would have had to have occurred to remove five minutes of content.
“Then it’s the little things, like a ton of sound changes. Jay redid a lot of the music. There’s just the types of tweaks that you can only do once you’ve actually watched a film with an audience, and we continued to make those tweaks well after even the Toronto premiere of the movie, but that’s just the way that we work. I think we find it fun, and if I could, I would still make changes.”
McCarrol added, “I think that we’ve always had a philosophy that you make one tiny little change, and it doesn’t really change the movie. You make 10 of those and the needle of quality moves just a little bit. What we try to do, every single movie that this team works on, it is pried away from our hands, and that’s a fun place to be. It’s also stressful, but it makes sure that you don’t look back and say that you didn’t try everything you could.”
A Secretive Shoot
Even though a number of scenes were filmed in contained locations, such as the pair’s apartment, the duo embraced a guerrilla-filmmaking style to capture footage on the streets of Toronto, sometimes earning genuine reactions from onlookers. One of the more impressive scenes in the movie involves the pair heading to the CN Tower, which features encounters that need to be seen to be believed. As far as how these sequences were pulled off, the pair might keep some secrets to themselves.
McCarrol expressed of their methods:
“We’re going to discuss that with ourselves in terms of, yes, what filmmaking we want to hold close to our chest, but it’s also a discussion with our producers and our lawyers and making sure that this film doesn’t get buried somewhere because of some legalities. It was a very difficult shoot. It was a bit of a sneaky shoot. We worked really hard at the technical elements of that shoot for it all to come together. It was a full ballet dance.
“And I hope that after the movie is out and released and disseminated everywhere that we could peel back the curtain and show how it all was made, but for now, we’re just trying to show that scene for what it is. Enjoy watching it not knowing how we did it. That’s the most fun.”
A Message From the Future to the Past
A key element of The Movie is Matt and Jay encountering younger versions of themselves, and with the duo having filmed each other for decades, they were able to utilize actual, never-before-seen footage of their younger selves to edit into the movie. Looking at the past, the filmmakers revealed how they personally would react if they got to meet younger versions of themselves. Johnson noted:
“The honest answer is what happens in the film is what I believe. I wouldn’t change the past because I think, a lot like Matt, I like who I am. With all my flaws, all the things wrong with me, I’m attached to them. I wouldn’t want to mess with that.”
McCarrol continued, “The question of, ‘What would you say…?’ to just reiterate that I don’t want to go back and change some things because it would mean that I’m not me anymore. I don’t want to not be me. ‘A card laid is a card played’ philosophy. Learn from it. That is who you are. That’s just what your path is. So if anything, if I did get to have some lucid message that hits my ears, I would just maybe say, ‘You’re doing okay. Don’t worry so much.’ You know what I mean? Maybe a little less worry could help my general insides do better with life, but yeah, I don’t want to change anything.”
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie lands in theaters on Feb. 13.
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie
- Release Date
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February 13, 2026
- Runtime
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95 minutes
- Director
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Matt Johnson
- Writers
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Matt Johnson, Jay McCarrol, Jared Raab, Curt Lobb, Matthew Miller, Matt Greyson, Luca Tarantini, Evan Morgan
- Producers
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Matthew Miller, Matt Greyson