Bon Jovi’s autobiography is part of Universal Pictures | Bon Jovi

Universal Pictures has confirmed that a Bon Jovi biopic is currently in the works.

The feature film will focus on the rock band’s early years, tracing their rise from humble beginnings in New Jersey to selling out stadiums as one of the most memorable rock bands of the 1980s.

The film is produced by Kevin J. Walsh (Manchester By the Sea, House of Gucci) and Gautham Chopra, who directed the 2024 four-part documentary Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story. Los Angeles writer Cody Protter is set to write the screenplay.

Bon Jovi has sold more than 130 million albums, and the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018 to celebrate their significant impact on rock music in a career that spanned several decades.

Born in the small town of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, Jon Bon Jovi grew up in a blue-collar family and began playing music after receiving an electric guitar as a Christmas gift when he was thirteen. “When you’re that age, everyone thinks you’re going to be a rock ‘n’ roll star and that you’re going to really succeed,” he told The Guardian in 2024. “I was stupid enough to believe that.”

As a teenager, Bon Jovi worked as an assistant at the Power Station recording studio in New York, and was amazed by the musicians who came through him such as Mick Jagger and Diana Ross. After releasing “Slippery When Wet” in 1986, Bon Jovi became a rock star, topping the US charts with a string of No. 1 hits including “Livin’ on a Prayer” and “You Give Love a Bad Name.”

The film will cover the band’s formation and peak with their supernova success in the 1980s as Bon Jovi became a must-see live act, performing in front of 100,000 fans at the 1989 Moscow Peace Music Festival.

Chopra’s documentary Thank You, Good Night traces the band’s highs as well as its subsequent lows, including the band members’ addiction problems and Jon Bon Jovi’s undergoing vocal surgery that threatened to end his singing career. Jack Seale of The Guardian praised the project as “a surprisingly devastating rumination on lost youth.”

In a 2025 interview, Jon Bon Jovi said he was thinking about who he wanted to play him in a biopic after watching Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere. The rocker said his first choice is his son Jake Bongiovi, the actor who starred opposite Kiernan Shipka in the 2024 rom-com Sweethearts.

Casting details have not yet been announced.