A Surprising New Music Biopic Will Explore the Life and Times of an Iconic ’80s Rock Band
Follow the Moskva down to Gorky Park, and listen to the Wind of Change. The iconic post-Cold War anthem and the Scorpions, the musicians who wrote and recorded it, are getting their own biopic later this year. Dominic West and Ed Speleers are set to star in the film, which will chronicle the rise of the German rockers and the recording of the ballad that helped unite their divided country after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Deadline reports that the film is now in production in England, and will be released later this year.
Speleers (Star Trek: Picard) will play guitarist Matthias Jabs, with Alexander Dreymon (The Last Kingdom) as guitarist and band founder Rudolf Schenker, Ludwig Trepte (Deutschland 83) as singer and lyricist Klaus Meine, and Luke Brandon Field (Interview With the Vampire) as drummer Herman Rarebell. West (The Crown) will play the band’s manager, Doc McGhee, and David Kross (The Reader) will appear as Andrej, a friend of the band who’s been imprisoned on the other side of the Berlin Wall. It is set to be directed by Alex Ranarivelo (Born a Champion), from a script by Mark Andrews. It is a production of ESX Entertainment and FOX Entertainment Global.
Founded in 1965 in Hanover, West Germany, the Scorpions were long a popular band in their home country, but broke into the American mainstream with the rise of MTV. Their mixture of hard-charging heavy metal and slower power ballads proved to be a winning formula in the 1980s, and songs like “Rock You Like a Hurricane,” “Still Loving You,” and “Send Me an Angel” became worldwide radio hits. Their most enduring hit remains “Wind of Change,” which was a plea for unity in response to the end of the Cold War and the reunification of the once-divided Germany; it has sold 14 million copies worldwide. The band has also contributed to a number of film soundtracks: their song “Hit Between the Eyes” was used as the theme for the Emilio Estevez–Anthony Hopkins science fiction actioner Freejack.
Winds of Change is the latest in a bumper crop of musical biopics, following the recent success of last year’s Bob Marley: One Love and A Complete Unknown. Coming out later this year is Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, in which The Bear‘s Jeremy Allen White will embody the iconic New Jersey rocker. Further down the road is Sam Mendes‘ audacious quadrilogy of Beatles biopics, which are expected to hit theaters in 2028.
Wind of Change is now in production, and is expected to be released later this year. Stay tuned.
