Jeff Feuerzeig’s film draws on unseen archive and fresh interviews with all five members, tracing the Sheffield band from working-class origins to more than 110 million albums sold. North American theatres come first; UK and Irish plans remain unconfirmed.
Def Leppard announced Long Live Def Leppard, their first authorised feature-length documentary, on 11 September 2026. Directed by Jeff Feuerzeig, the film is set for a North American theatrical release in early 2027 through Bleecker Street’s Crosswalk event cinema division, which acquired the rights the same day. It brings together never-before-seen footage and new interviews with the five current members: Joe Elliott, Phil Collen, Vivian Campbell, Rick Savage and Rick Allen. The project has been produced by VICE Studios, White Horse Pictures, The Searchers Documentary Films and Sobey Road Entertainment, in close collaboration with the band. Feuerzeig, who first saw the group open for Ozzy Osbourne in 1981, has described the film as a “unique, heartwarming and often humorous underdog story”. No UK or Irish theatrical details were given at the time.
From Sheffield to the charts Def Leppard formed in Sheffield in 1976 and quickly became part of the new wave of British heavy metal that defined the early 1980s. The line-up that has been stable since 1992 — Savage, Elliott, Allen, Collen and Campbell — is the one that appears throughout the new interviews. Their commercial peak ran from the early 1980s into the early 1990s, anchored by two albums that still define the catalogue for most listeners: Pyromania in 1983 and Hysteria in 1987. Those records turned a local hard-rock band into a global presence. The documentary is expected to follow that arc from working-class beginnings through the breakthrough years, the pressure of sudden success, and the long haul that followed. The band’s recent output, including live sets and singles released as recently as 2025 and 2026, underlines that the story has not stopped at the classic era.
What the film sets out to cover The producers and the band say Long Live Def Leppard will examine the rise that produced Pyromania and Hysteria, the 1984 accident in which Rick Allen lost an arm, the death of guitarist Steve Clark in 1991, and the group’s continuing career. Worldwide sales are put at more than 110 million albums; the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction is also part of the narrative the film intends to tell. Allen’s return to the kit after the accident and the decision to carry on after Clark’s death are among the moments that have long shaped how the band is written about. By working with the five current members and granting access to previously unseen material, the film positions itself as the authorised account rather than another external retrospective. Feuerzeig’s long acquaintance with the group — stretching back to that 1981 support slot — is presented as the starting point for a film that aims to keep humour and warmth alongside the harder passages. For British and Irish audiences who have lived with these records for decades, the absence so far of confirmed theatrical dates on this side of the Atlantic is the immediate question. The North American release window is locked for early 2027; whether Long Live Def Leppard reaches UK or Irish cinemas in the same period, or later, has not yet been stated. Until then the film stands as the first full-length authorised portrait of a band that has spent half a century turning Sheffield hard rock into one of the most durable catalogues in the business.
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