Cocker leaves the door open for Pulp

The encore film is now a MUBI exclusive after its short cinema run, built from the 2025 O2 nights and four decades of archive — and he ties hopes of a return to his age.

Jarvis Cocker has said Pulp are not finished. As the band’s career-spanning documentary settles into exclusive streaming, the singer has made clear the group have no current touring plans, though they may rehearse or write towards the end of the year if they feel ready. He hopes they will tour again sooner rather than later, and he has tied that wish to his age.

Pulp: What Do You Do For An Encore?, directed by Garth Jennings and narrated by Cocker, went live on MUBI on 25 September after a brief theatrical window. It fuses footage from the band’s 2025 O2 Arena shows with four decades of archival material and features twenty songs from the tour that supported the album More. Cocker has described watching the finished film as seeing his life pass before his eyes.

From Sheffield to the O2

Pulp formed in Sheffield in 1978. The early run of records — It in 1983, Freaks in 1987 — formed part of a long apprenticeship before the line-up that carried them to their critical and commercial peak: Cocker with Russell Senior, Candida Doyle, Nick Banks, Steve Mackey and Mark Webber. That arc, and the years that followed, are the material Jennings and Cocker put on screen.

More arrived in 2025, the first new album in a long stretch away from the studio, with singles including Got to Have Love and The Man Comes Around. Begging for Change followed in 2026. The 2025 arena dates that feed the documentary were the live counterpart to that return. The film places those O2 nights inside the longer catalogue rather than treating them as a free-standing comeback snapshot, which is why the archive matters as much as the recent setlists.

A pause, not a full stop

The project was announced earlier in 2026. UK cinema audiences saw it first, with one-night theatrical previews in Canada, the United States and Mexico, before MUBI took the exclusive streaming window from 25 September. What has sharpened since is Cocker’s own framing of where the band stand once the lights go down.

Pulp are not a closed chapter, but they are not on the road. Any writing or rehearsal before the year is out remains conditional on the band feeling ready. Cocker wants a return to touring sooner rather than later, and he has said so without dressing it as a promise. For a group whose recorded work now runs from the early eighties through More and the 2026 single, the documentary functions as both a reckoning and a hold. The MUBI release keeps the O2 performances and the four-decade archive in front of audiences while the next move — studio time, a stage, or simply waiting until the songs are there — stays with the band.

That is the ground the film leaves them on: not nostalgia as an ending, and not a tour announcement either. The encore in the title is still a question Cocker is willing to answer in public, but not on a fixed date.