Grateful Dead Doc ‘Long Strange Trip’ Acquired by Amazon

Long Strange Trip
Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann and Phil Lesh appear in ‘Long Strange Trip’ (Courtesy of Sundance Institute | Photo by Andrew Kent)

Amazon has picked up the Grateful Dead documentary, Long Strange Trip, and is planning a May 26, 2017 premiere on Amazon Prime Video. The four hour documentary was directed by Amir Bar-Lev (The Tillman Story) and executive produced by Martin Scorsese, Emma Tillinger Koskoff, Rick Yorn, Andrew Heller, Sanford Heller, Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Thomas J. Mangan IV, and Alicia Sams. The Grateful Dead documentary was financed by producers Eric Eisner, Nick Koskoff, and Alex Blavatnik.

Long Strange Trip is set to have its world premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and will air in six parts on Amazon Prime Video.

“I first reached out to the Grateful Dead about this film back in 2003,” stated director Bar-Lev. “Since then, everyone who has come aboard has treated this project with a renegade spirit of cooperation and ingenuity worthy of the subject matter. I recognized immediately that Amazon was the perfect distributor when I met their team, and I can’t wait to see how many brains they can infect with the Dead’s contagious brand of anti-establishment fun.”

“I’ve always admired the spirit and creativity of the Grateful Dead,” said Scorsese. “They are revolutionary artists who forever changed the world of touring and recording live music. They were a cultural force—a lifestyle, that continue to influence new generations of fans. This film will entertain and educate audiences about one of the most innovative and groundbreaking American bands of the 20th century.”

“The story of the Grateful Dead is that of music and culture of the 20th Century,” said Joe Lewis, Head of Comedy and Drama, Amazon Studios. “Told with vast scope and an unprecedented cast of real life characters, Amir has taken advantage of this larger than life canvas to make an era-defining musical portrait that we can’t wait to bring to audiences everywhere.”


Commenting on the documentary, the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir said, “Over several decades a group of guys hung together making music in a group that was way tighter and lasted much longer than most marriages. Here’s the movie…”

Details on Long Strange Trip: The 30-year odyssey of the Grateful Dead was the most unlikely success story in rock and roll history. Famously averse to publicity, seemingly incapable of recording radio-friendly hits, they flouted music-industry convention by giving their live music away to a global network of tape traders, becoming the highest-grossing concert act in America on word of mouth alone.

Executive produced by Scorsese (Silence), Long Strange Trip is the first full-length documentary to explore the fiercely independent vision, insistence on continuous innovation, and uncompromising commitment to their audience that propelled the original jam band from a Bay Area pizza parlor to the ranks of the most enduringly influential musicians of their generation. By assembling candid interviews with the band, road crew, family members, and notable Deadheads, director Bar-Lev unearths the untold history of the Dead and the freewheeling psychedelic subculture that sprouted up around it, while providing poignant insight into the psyche of late lead guitarist Jerry Garcia, who disdained leadership of the increasingly sprawling collective organization that kept the show on the road.

With a soundtrack that captures some of the band’s most dynamic live performances as well as unguarded moments offstage and never before seen footage and photos, Long Strange Trip is an epic exploration into a uniquely American experiment in radically eclectic music-making that continues to earn the passionate loyalty of generations of fans worldwide.