WEIRD: The Al Yankovic Story skipped a theatrical release by going straight to streaming on The Roku Channel.
The parody biopic WEIRD: The story of Al Yankovic is now streaming on The Roku Channel, where it’s free for anyone to watch. Critics and viewers alike seem to enjoy the movie for the most part, praising its humor along with lead actor Daniel Radcliffe’s performance as the titular parodist. Many have wondered why the movie couldn’t have been released in theaters instead of going straight to streaming, feel FOREIGN was worth a run on the big screen.
“Weird Al” Yankovic, the subject of the film who also co-wrote the script and acted as producer, says the direct release was his idea. In a recent interview with Bill MaherYankovic explained how his only previous feature film, 1989’s UHF, bombed when it was released in theaters. More than three decades later, the “Like a Surgeon” singer is still feeling the sting of that movie coming up short in theaters, and as he explains to Maher, he didn’t want to risk the same thing happening to WEIRD: The story of Al Yankovic.
“This is actually why I wanted to sell it to a streaming platform in the first place. You don’t know how well it works. And I was a little shy when UHF came out in 1989. That’s my first movie, I post my movies 33 years apart… But my first movie didn’t do well at the box office… I decided that if I put out another movie, it would be nice not to bomb, and not even have a chance to bomb, because nobody knows the songs on the streaming services. But it’s getting good reviews and people seem to like it.”
Al Yankovic gets frustrated with other biopics
Yankovic also confirmed that he was researching for FOREIGN by looking at biopics of other musicians like Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketmanand Elvis. He explained that he enjoys watching these kinds of movies, but that he tends to get frustrated when the filmmakers take creative liberties he doesn’t think are necessary. That inspired Yankovic to take that idea but flip the dial to 11, resulting in a parody biopic that bears no resemblance to the famous parodist’s real life.
“I enjoyed all of them, but they upset me as a fan, because you know, I’m a big Elton John fan. I’m a big Queen fan. But when I watch these movies, I just notice where they just take liberties. Even times when they don’t have to. They just change the facts, they change the chronology.”
WEIRD: The story of Al Yankovic now streaming on The Roku Channel. Yankovic’s first movie, UHFalso currently streaming on Roku for free.