A biopic based on Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Anthony Kiedis is in the works

The story of Anthony Kiedis, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ frontman, is being steered toward a screen adaptation, with Universal Pictures having optioned the rights to the singer’s best selling 2004 memoir Scar Tissue.

Kiedis himself has been slated as a producer on the project along with Brian Grazer of Imagine Entertainment and Guy Oseary, manager for the Chili Peppers since 2021.

Kiedis’ memoir Scar Tissue chronicles the tumultuous relationship with his father, their addiction to drugs, the death of founding Chili Peppers guitarist Hillel Slovak of a heroin overdose in 1988, how he and Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea kept the band on its feet.

However, the Chili Peppers ringleader has reflected on his regrets in writing the memoir, telling The Sun in 2016: “I did regret the book for a while as there was some pain caused. But then, I started seeing the long term positive reverberating. People were reading it in hospitals, in prisons and schools and it was having a positive effect.”

He continued: “I realised that the whole point of writing that book wasn’t for me, but to show that somebody can go all the way down and come all the way back and have a productive, successful happy interesting life. And so whatever shame, pain or difficulty or discomfort I went through, then it was worth it because I get so many people coming up to me saying their kids had read it and got their act together because of it.”

The film is currently in the early development stages at the studio, and Universal has yet to announce a tentative release date, director and cast. However, the studio promises, per Deadline Hollywood, an adaptation of the book that will be “a shockingly candid portrait of an artist, addict and ringleader” and boasts “a deeply unconventional father and son story set against a substance-fueled ‘70s and ‘80s L.A. punk scene. This story examines, without judgement, how all of his expectations shaped the music that was eventually embraced by millions.”