KILLING BONO Film (Yes, That Bono) To Start Shooting This Month

Movie by Joey Paur

Killing Bono will be a film that is based on a novel by Neil McCormick. Just so you know the film is not a biopic of U2’s Bono, the story is based on the author's experience of living in the shadow of Bono and his band U2. McCormick went to school with Bono, and they have been friends from the very begining. He was trying to get his band off the ground while U2 was just getting started as well. McCormick had very high ambitions for his life. He wanted the life Bono had, but that’s not what he ended up with.

Here is the description of the book that should give you a better idea of what this story is all about.

Some are born great.

Some achieve greatness.

Some have greatness thrust upon them.

And some have the misfortune

to go to school with Bono.

Everyone wants to be famous. But as a young punk in Dublin in the 1970s, Neil McCormick's ambitions went way beyond mere pop stardom. It was his destiny to be a veritable Rock God. He had it all worked out: the albums, the concerts, the quest for world peace. There was only one thing he hadn't counted on. The boy sitting on the other side of the classroom had plans of his own.

Killing Bono is a story of divergent lives. As Bono and his band U2 ascended to global superstardom, his school friend Neil scorched a burning path in quite the opposite direction. Bad drugs, weird sex, bizarre haircuts: Neil experienced it all in his elusive quest for fame. But sometimes it is life's losers who have the most interesting tales to tell.

Featuring guest appearances by the Pope, Bob Dylan, and a galaxy of stars, Killing Bono offers an extremely funny, startlingly candid, and strangely moving account of a life lived in the shadows of superstardom.

"The problem with knowing you is that you've done everything I ever wanted to," Neil once complained to his famous friend. "I'm your doppelganger," Bono replied. "If you want your life back, you'll have to kill me."

Now there was a thought...

This sound like quite an interesting story and should definitely make for a good film. The movie is being directed by Nick Hamm, and the film stars Ben Barnes (The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian) as McCormick along with Krysten Ritter (Breaking Bad, 27 Dresses), Robert Sheehan, Charlie Cox and Jason Byrne. The movie will start shooting in Belfast on January 11th, from a script written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais.

Again, this is not a U2 biopic, it is a biopic of the man that wanted the world and he didn’t succeed. This sure does sound like a downer of a story but one that I’ll definitely watch, I think there’s just as much to learn from the failures of people as there is to learn from the success of people.

Just so you know there seems to be no bad blood between McCormick and Bono, in fact Bono wrote the forward to the book. 

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