Apple’s Next Big Music Documentary Will Feature U2’s Bono
Credit: Daniel Hazard, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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As the company that effectively brought digital music mainstream with the iPod and the iTunes Music Store, Apple has a special place in its heart for the music industry and the artists that inspire us. While Apple TV+ has given us plenty of big-budget movies and award-winning TV shows, Apple has also produced some groundbreaking music documentaries, from The Beastie Boys Story and Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry to Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues.
Apple has now announced its next milestone in music documentaries, Bono: Stories of Surrender, and it features an artist who’s had such a close relationship with the iPod maker that we’re surprised it’s taken this long.
The relationship between Apple and U2 goes back to nearly the advent of the iPod. In 2004, Apple partnered with the band to release the U2 Special Edition iPod. It was the first full-sized iPod available in anything other than white, featuring a black face with a red click wheel. It also had the band members’ signatures — Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullin Jr. — engraved on the back and came with a coupon for purchasing The Complete U2 digital box set on iTunes.
The following year, Apple signed on to (RED), the organization founded by Bono and Bobby Shriver to raise money in the fight to end AIDS and other diseases that plague developing nations. In 2014, U2’s frontman took the stage at an Apple event to unveil their latest album, Songs of Innocence, and announce that the band and the tech company had partnered to make it free to all iTunes users. That one ended up being a PR misstep, as Apple made the odd decision to automatically load it onto everyone’s iPhones, whether they wanted it or not. Bono eventually apologized, telling Rolling Stone that they’d gotten “carried away” with themselves.
While the relationship between Apple and U2 seems to have drifted apart in recent years — even the (RED) partnership appears to be fading away — it looks like the legendary Irish star is returning to Apple for what could be its most significant music documentary to date.
Described as a “vivid reimagining of Bono’s critically acclaimed one-man stage show” of the same name, Bono: Stories of Surrender won’t just be debuting on Apple TV+. Instead, Apple plans to go beyond the usual two dimensions and produce and release it as an immersive documentary for the Apple Vision Pro in full 8K glory.
“Bono: Stories of Surrender (Immersive)” will be the first feature-length film available in Apple Immersive Video, a remarkable media format recorded in 8K with Spatial Audio to produce a 180-degree video that places viewers onstage with Bono and in the center of his story.
Apple
The documentary will not only cover Bono’s life and personal stories but also include exclusive, never-before-seen footage from the Beacon Theatre shows and performances of many of his most iconic U2 songs.
“Since U2’s earliest days, Bono and the band have consistently pushed boundaries and embraced new technologies to forge deeper and unexpected connections with their audience,” Apple notes, adding that the move to a Vision Pro documentary is just another example of “Bono’s enduring commitment to innovation.
Apple hasn’t said what the running time of the new documentary will be, but it hinted at it by saying it will be the “first feature-length film available in Apple Immersive video.” The longest movie Apple has produced for its spatial computing headset so far has been Submerged at a mere 16 minutes, so the new Bono biopic will undoubtedly beat it by a healthy margin.
Bono: Stories of Surrender will premiere globally on both Apple TV+ and the Apple Vision Pro on May 30.
