Pulp's encore documentary streams on MUBI today

After one-night theatrical previews, Garth Jennings’ film locks in as a MUBI exclusive — with no further broadcast or physical window yet set.

Pulp: What Do You Do for an Encore? is available exclusively on MUBI from today, 25 September 2026. The documentary, directed by Garth Jennings and narrated by Jarvis Cocker, arrives after a short run of one-night theatrical previews, including at US theatres on 25 September.

The film pairs live footage from the band’s 2025 arena shows at London’s O2 Arena — nights staged in support of the album *More* — with four decades of archival material that charts their rise from Sheffield outsiders. The piece turns on history, personnel changes and the reasons the work still holds an audience, framed as concert film and scrapbook biography rather than a conventional career lecture.

Jennings is a long-time collaborator. Cocker has described watching the finished film as like seeing his life pass before his eyes, with the narration drawing on childhood diary entries. MUBI is distributing, and early responses have favoured the mix of stage material and archive. No additional broadcast slot or physical release has been announced.

From Sheffield rooms to the O2

Pulp formed in Sheffield in 1978. At their critical and commercial peak the line-up comprised Cocker, Russell Senior, Candida Doyle on keyboards, Nick Banks, Steve Mackey on bass and Mark Webber. Their recorded path runs from the early albums *It* in 1983 and *Freaks* in 1987 through a long stretch of singles and EPs, the 2012 remaster of *It* and the live document *Party Clowns: Live In London 1991*. It continues with the 2013 single After You and on to the 2025 return.

*More* arrived in 2025, flanked by the singles Got to Have Love and The Man Comes Around, with Begging for Change following in 2026. The O2 Arena shows that feed the documentary mark the scale of that return: arena shows for a group that spent years as outsiders before the wider audience caught up. Jennings folds those nights into home-movie texture and older television, letting the songs and the scrapbook do the arguing rather than a tidy voice-of-God survey.

What the stream changes

For listeners who already know the records, the gigs and the cover versions, the value lies in the junction the film makes: recent arena sound against four decades of tape, Cocker’s own narration against the old plan written in a school diary. The title’s question — what you do for an encore — is the practical one after a long wait and a new album. The answer on screen is the 2025 performances themselves, cut against the earlier life of the band.

Previous coverage tracked the previews and the approach of the MUBI window. The MUBI window is now open. The exclusive stream is the only release currently confirmed; any broadcast or physical release remains unannounced. For a band whose story has always been as much about the long haul as the peak nights, the film’s arrival on a single platform keeps the emphasis where the footage does: on the work, the stage, and the archive that still speaks.