Holy Crap, Metallica’s Through the Never Was Friggin’ Expensive to Make!

Metallica have released the first two clips in their new web series Hit the Lights about their forthcoming 3D film Through the Never, featuring behind-the-scenes clips, interviews with the band, their management, and the filmmakers and a surprisingly open discussion about how much friggin’ money went into making this thing.

Is that an “80 million dollars” figure I hear bandied about by Peter Mensch in the first clip? Ohmigod.

Watching these clips I can’t help but wonder if the final product would’ve been stronger if it were strictly a concert film; in roughly 13 minutes of video there’s just one clip of the narrative plotline, essentially glossing over it except to say (I’m paraphrasing here), “Holy shit, it was a lot of work! We thought we couldn’t do it.” That makes me wonder whether the band and filmmakers have confidence that the narrative portion came out well. As far as the live show part, it looks killer; tons of extra props and stage effects brought in just for this, and of course the whole 3D element of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if we get a look into the film’s narrative portion in subsequent Hit the Lights episodes, but at the very least I think it says something that we’re seeing all the live show stuff first in one big chunk.

I gotta at least hand it to Metallica for being honest about the potential ridiculousness of such an undertaking. James and Lars are completely candid here about how much this thing cost to produce and how much of a risk it was (and is): “Our kids could still have the bill for this thing!” Touche; we’ll find out in just a couple of weeks.