A Bon Jovi biopic is in the works from Universal Pictures, Deadline has confirmed.
The feature film will focus on the early years of the rock band, tracing their rise from modest beginnings in New Jersey to selling out stadiums as one of the 1980s’ most defining rock bands.
The film will be produced by Kevin J Walsh (Manchester By The Sea, House of Gucci) and Gotham Chopra, who directed 2024’s four part documentary Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story. The Los Angeles writer Cody Brotter is set to write the script.
Bon Jovi have sold over 130m albums, and the band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2018 to celebrate their huge impact on rock music in their multi– decade career.
Born Jon Bongiovi in the small city of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, Jon Bon Jovi was raised in a blue collar household and started playing music after receiving an electric guitar as a Christmas present when he was 13. “When you’re that age everybody thinks you’re gonna be a rock’n’roll star and that you’re gonna really make it,” he told the Guardian in 2024. “I was just 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 came through such as Mick Jagger and Diana Ross. After releasing 1986’s Slippery When Wet, Bon Jovi became rock superstars, and topped US charts with a string of number ones including Livin’ On a Prayer and You Give Love a Bad Name.
The film will cover the band’s formation and climax with their 1980s supernova success as Bon Jovi became a must see live act, performing in front of 100,000 fans at 1989’s Moscow Music Peace Festival.
Chopra’s documentary Thank You, Goodnight traces the band’s highs as well as the subsequent lows, including band member 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 rumination on lost youth.”
In a 2025 interview, Jon Bon Jovi said that he had been ruminating on who he would want to be played by in a biopic after watching Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere. The rock singer said that his top choice was his son Jake Bongiovi, an actor who starred opposite Kiernan Shipka in the 2024 romcom Sweethearts.
Casting details have yet to be announced.
