Mike Dirnt bassist for punk rock band Green Day, is producing an indie film, ‘Crickets’ is about a stand-up comic, diagnosed with a terminal illness.
According to billboard, Mike Dirnt and Green Day manager Pat Magnarella will be producers on Crickets. The script is written by Dirnt's longtime friend Alfedo Botello and Jack Umbrella. The film is currently in pre-production, with casting underway and a crew being assembled.
The film is based on the relationship of two alienated brothers. One is an aspiring stand-up comic, that is dying of a terminal illness, the other brother works a 9 to 5 office job. He asks his brother, a depressed office idler, for one last request: to go on stage and perform his material for him to see if he ever really had any talent. What he doesn't reveal, though, is that he has an even bigger surprise in store.
Dirnt and Botello have been friends for more than twenty years, the Green Day rocker frequents a bar in the Bay Area that Botello owns. Botello told The Hollywood Reporter :
"It’s something I've been working on a while back, i wanted to write something about the topic of death that was touching but not too sentimental."
The bassist's wife was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, “I’ve been — and a lot of people have been — affected by illnesses and it’s a very relatable thing," says Dirnt, adding that the film's central love-hate relationship between the estranged brothers "feels very real." “I'm just kind of tired of junk food movies," says Dirnt. "Here’s something that's a feel good, feel bad and feel everything movie."
Dirnt is also a producer on American Idiot the movie, based on the Broadway adaptation of the band’s album. He is rumoured to be writing music for the Crickets soundtrack, having previously working on many film soundtracks, including The Simpsons Movie, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2.
Green Day are currently taking a break after an Australian tour that ended in March. The band's frontman Billie Joe Armstrong told Radio 2 DJ Jo Wiley that:
"We haven't really been doing much, so it's just nice to kind of do some other things, y'know. When we get ready to do Green Day again, our batteries will be charged."
