He’s made films about fast food, the war on terror and product placement, but now documentarian Morgan Spurlock is turning his lens on the world’s biggest boy band, One Direction.
The “Super Size Me” director is at the helm for “One Direction: This is Us,” the band’s first concert documentary. The 3D “motion picture event” hits theaters this Friday.
While the subject matter may seem a little less intellectually rigorous than audiences have come to expect from the director, he said he was drawn to the project because of the popularity of concert documentaries.
“The day this movie opens, it’s going to be seen on more screens, by more people around the world, than any of my movies combined,” he recently told the New York Times. “This will be the first time I ever had a movie play in my hometown of Beckley, W.Va.”
In fact this isn’t even the first time that Spurlock flirted with this type of film, having been contacted regarding recent movies about Justin Bieber and Katy Perry.
In the film, Spurlock follows the boys around on a world tour and is packed with footage of the band performing, their adoring fans screaming in delight and the boys just hanging out with one another.
Despite the access the director was given – member Niall Horren said the cameras came “into the toilet with us, no lie” – the Times reports that the film focuses on the family-friendly aspects of the group.
But part of One Direction’s pristine portrayal can be credited to the fact that Spurlock did not have final-cut, something he hints led to some difficulty.
“There were four separate entities that had very strong opinions and beliefs,” he said. “You do juggle quite a bit.”
This also means that something like the band’s vast financial empire, doesn’t get the look audiences might expect from Spurlock, a director who’s built a career on exploring and exposing how systems like this work. Instead he’s opted to use a softer touch with the band.
“You want to keep the fantasy,” he told the Times. “You want to Oz to stay Oz.”
While the film might not appeal to Spurlock’s typical fan base, it’s all but guaranteed to appeal to a much larger audience. One Direction is one of the world’s biggest pop acts after all.
Earlier this month, at a screening in Los Angeles, police had to be called in when a group of fans stormed the theater showing the film.