Elton John documentary to premiere at Toronto Film Festival
A documentary on Elton John is set to premiere at the upcoming Toronto Film Festival 2024.
Elton John: Never Too Late will show John’s journey through the Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour, which began in 2018 and wrapped up in Stockholm last July. It was the first-ever concert tour to earn over $900million (£708million) in gross ticket sales, making it the highest grossing concert tour of all time.
According to Music News, the documentary will also “pull the back the curtain” on the superstar’s life, featuring “never-before-seen concert footage of him over the past 50 years, as well as hand-written journals and present-day footage of him and his family”.
Some of the footage taken from the farewell tour was filmed at his final US performance at the Dodger Stadium in November 2022. The concert was livestreamed by Disney+ and subsequently issued on the streaming platform as Elton John Live: Farewell from Dodger Stadium.
Elton John: Never Too Late is jointly directed by R.J. Cutler and David Furnish, John’s husband. The film will screen at the festival sometime in September, with a Disney+ release scheduled for a later date.
At John’s final date in Stockholm, he told the crowd: “Fifty years of pure joy playing music… how lucky am I? I wouldn’t be sitting here… it wasn’t for you. You bought the singles, the CDs, the albums, the cassettes… [and] more importantly, you bought the tickets to the shows. You know how much I love to play live. It’s been my lifeblood to play for you guys. You’ve been absolutely magnificent.”
Meanwhile, John is not done releasing new music just yet. In May, his friend and co-writer Bernie Taupin revealed that John’s 32nd studio album is “all done and recorded”.
“I think it’s quite brilliant and quite contemporary and it will certainly surprise a lot of people and excite a lot of people and hopefully be successful,” Taupin teases.
A book covering his farewell tour, authored by John himself, is also due to publish in September.
