New Years Rev is a movie about Green Day fans, for Green Day fans, and by Green Day fans–not to mention Green Day themselves. The film tells the story of a young band, Analog Dogs, pranked into believing they have a slot opening for Green Day at a New Year’s gig–if they can get there in time for the show.

Hijinks ensue as the band travels America in a picturesque vintage taxicab, falling into situations that may or may not have actually been faced by Green Day themselves during their early touring years. Mason Thames (How to Train Your Dragon), Kylr Coffman, and Ryan Foust star, supported by a cast that includes Jenna Fischer, Mckenna Grace, and Bobby Lee.

Also in the movie, of course, are Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tré Cool, also known as Green Day. I was at the Palladium in Los Angeles to witness the band perform their in-movie New Year’s concert as writer-director Lee Kirk captured the controlled chaos, and can confirm it felt just as real as the other concerts I’ve attended.

New Years Rev director Lee Kirk and Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong spoke with me for ScreenRant in celebration of the movie’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. They revealed how Green Day’s early years became fuel for a road trip comedy culminating in a performance by the band and discussed the impetus of the film, its impressive cast, and its family ties.

From The Mind Of Billie Joe Armstrong

New Years Rev started as a simple idea. “I had a movie idea [where] I wanted to have a young band travel across [the country] to end up at a New Year’s Eve show with Green Day playing,” Billie Joe Armstrong said on the phone from Argentina, where the band had played the night before.

To get the ball rolling, he called up Lee Kirk, with whom he had collaborated on the 2016 film Ordinary World and struck up a friendship. “We just started talking about movies,” Kirk said, name-checking Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, National Lampoon’s Vacation, Risky Business, The Breakfast Club, and even Superbad as influences.

As things progressed, the director said, “I’ve got to come up with all these antics that happened to these kids along the way, and who better to ask than Billie Joe, Mike, and Tré … So, I pulled a lot of their stories and used them as a seed for the story in the movie.”

But don’t expect a pure translation. “It was important, too, that this wasn’t a biopic,” Kirk clarified. “[I was] just pulling elements from their story, and it was a fun way to tell a story and have all these little Easter eggs in there from the band’s lives.”

Meet Analog Dogs

Analog Dogs is composed of lead singer Tommy (Mason Thames), bᴀssist Fred (Kylr Coffman), and drummer Chad (Ryan Foust), whose chemistry is key to making the movie work. Their name is a nod to Tommy’s love of analog gear, which also helps New Years Rev lean into nostalgic road trip movie conventions.

“The problem with cell phones and storytelling is that so many things could be cleared up so easily with a cell phone,” Kirk explained. “I was like, ‘Let’s get rid of the cell phones as quickly as we can. Let’s just get these kids on the road and let them just be out there on this adventure.’”

“It was a risk to try to put all this older technology into the story,” the director added (Tommy dreams of making his band’s demos with a TASCAM 4-track analog recorder in a world where digital recording is readily available) “but it just felt right to me.”

When casting the band, Kirk found rising star Mason Thames first. “I was very excited to get him,” he said. “He was so thrilled about Green Day, so I was excited to have him on board.” Thankfully, Thames had a rocker’s voice. Kylr Coffman, his co-star, knew his way around a fretboard.

“I wanted everybody to actually play their instruments and know how to play and not pantomime,” Armstrong shared. “That was really important.”

Both Armstrong and Kirk also called out a somewhat miraculous feat pulled off by Ryan Foust. “He learned how to play drums in two weeks,” Armstrong said, “and he did a great job. It’s like, ‘Oh my God, this kid really pushed himself to be able to be a drummer.’ He was great.”

“I just wanted to find the right chemistry,” Kirk reflected. “I wanted to find three kids that feel like they’re a band, [and] that you believe are the same as Mike and Billie Joe and Tré … and those kids are fantastic. They did such a good job and, every day, just brought so much to the story.”

New Years Rev Is A Family Affair

Family is a key theme of New Years Rev. But while a menacing older brother (played by Keen Ruffalo) and lost family member are key to the story of the film, there are strong family ties behind the camera as well.

“Billie Joe and his wife and my wife and myself–we’re friends,” Kirk shared. “They have two great kids, who are adults, who both worked on this movie, [and] I have two younger kids.”

“It was one of my favorite parts,” Armstrong worked with his son Jakob on msuic for the film. “It was one of my favorite parts,” he said. “He wrote the majority of the songs for Analog Dogs, and then we collaborated on one of them. It was really special, and he did such a great job. He is such a great musician and songwriter on his own.”

“It was one of those father and son moments that we got to share that is really unique, that I think not a lot of dads and sons can actually say they get to do,” Armstrong continued. “It’s not just going fishing together.”

For Lee Kirk and his family, the movie had an even deeper meaning. His wife, Jenna Fischer, appears in the movie as Tommy’s mother Jodie, described by Kirk as a “rock ‘n roll mom” who is “so different from Pam” and a character that Fischer wouldn’t typically be asked to play. But her role meant much more.

“She went through breast cancer the year before,” Kirk said. “She finished her treatment just as I was doing pre-production on the movie. So, this was something that we had to look forward to; a fun thing to put all that toughness behind. She’s totally healthy now, it’s great, and so I wanted to use it for our family.”

Kirk and Fischer’s children both act in the film alongside Mckenna Grace, with their son performing as her drummer. “The film became, for the Kirk family,” the director said, “a special little thing that we were all doing together … this journey, for us, has been special.”

The Pop Punk Optimism Behind New Years Rev

New Years Rev is a wild ride that celebrates Green Day’s legacy in multiple ways. The soundtrack, of course, is theirs (“You’ve got 30 years of music to use, so I felt like, ‘Let’s use it all,’” Kirk said), and their past exploits have been gleefully reinterpreted to fit the story.

It’s also an embrace of the doggedness that has Green Day playing in front of arenas full of people on a regular basis to this day. Armstrong spoke about that, reflecting on his band’s early years. “We never had anything to fall back on,” he shared.

“It was like, ‘I’m going to do or die, and if it doesn’t work out, then I’m still going to play music.’ That’s my habit.” He continued, saying “I’m going to do whatever I can to support that habit, whether it’s washing dishes or boxing records in the back of the record store.”

It’s a sentiment Armstrong says is shared by his band members. “We’ve always had drive to keep going, for sure,” he said. “We definitely had times where we’ve had burnout, but I never thought an option was to quit.”

“For us, it was like, ‘Trends come and go. As long as we’re writing good songs … we’ll be able to keep going’” Armstrong reflected. “It’s worked out great for us, because we’ve been able to tap into new generations of fans every time that we come out with a new record.”

But there have been scary times for Green Day. “One of the big decisions for us was going from Lookout records to Warner Brothers,” Armstrong said of the move that preceded 1994’s Dookie album. “We bet on our future, and it was a scary moment for us. I don’t know what failure would have looked like.”

That tenacity translates in New Years Rev, especially given the fact that Analog Dogs do make it to the Palladium in time to treat viewers to an actual Green Day performance. “Billie Joe and I were like, ‘It’s got to be a real concert,’” Kirk said of the show-within-a-movie, “It’s got to be real. There was no question.”

The room was filled with extras that were “just real Green Day fans,” Kirk said, “so the fact that they’re all singing at the top of their lungs … you feel that in the movie.” “That was always part of the plan,” he said: “Let’s just shoot a concert.”

What’s Next For Billie Joe?

In addition to finding out what Armstrong believes are Green Day’s most underrated albums (Revolution Radio and the Uno! Dos! Tre! trilogy), I asked what may be next in the world of the singer’s many side projects. This is, after all, the man who did an Everly Brothers tribute album with Norah Jones and starred in his own Broadway musical.

“I don’t have anything planned right now,” he said, before adding, “I would love to do some shows with Pinhead Gunpowder, who put out a record this year also. That’s been something we’ve been waiting to do for over 15 years now. So, I think that’s the only thing I’d really like to do right now.”

But, he continued, “I like being busy and I like having fun playing music, like being in a cover band and doing The Coverups with my friends. So, hopefully I’ll do more of that. I think it keeps me from being completely locked in on doing Green Day all the time. It kind of reduces the pressure.”

The conversation also turned to a Green Day opus that continues to be relevant in 2025 as Armstrong reflected on reworking the original lyrics of “American Idiot”–heard in the recently-released 20th anniversary edition of that album–to what became the final version.

“I just edited the lyrics and maybe tried to make it more direct and simplify it a little bit more,” he said. “Then, I just did the demo and tucked it away and [wrote] the final version of the song, and then I was like, ‘Oh, s–-t. This is it.’”

“I remember looking at the band and [going], ‘Are we all on the same page with this? This is becoming more topical and political,’” he shared, adding, “they were like, ‘Hell yeah.’”

“‘American Idiot’ keeps becoming more and more real as time goes on,” Armstrong continued, “especially right now with the current climate that we’re in socially and politically.” As good as that is for Green Day, the singer and songwriter wouldn’t mind if “American Idiot” felt less of the modern era. In his words, “I want to write some happy music.”

However long the wait will be for that music considering Green Day is still wrapping up their Saviors album cycle, New Years Rev will likely serve as the fun sH๏τ in the arm that many Green Day fans are surely looking for.