Photo by Josh Brasted/FilmMagic
Scar Tissue, the frank and revealing autobiography of Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis, is to be turned into a movie. Deadline reports that the biopic is in the early stages of production after Universal Pictures picked up the rights to the book, which was first published in 2004.
The idea of a Red Hot Chili Peppers movie is an undeniably appealing prospect to a Hollywood studio, Universal has recent success in the field with N.W.A. story Straight Outta Compton while Elvis Presley, Elton John, and Queen have also been the subject of hugely profitable screen adaptations of their life stories.
Scar Tissue isn't a book that lends itself to a straight forward story of world tours and No.1 hits, however. Co-written by Kiedis and Larry Sloman, the book reflects on the frontman's unusual upbringing with a father who introduced him to drugs with one passage recalling his first time taking heroin, age 14. Later in the book Kiedis discusses his relationship with the actor Ione Skye, who was 16 when he met her at age 24.
In 2016, Kiedis told The Sun he initially regretted the book’s tell-all nature. “I did regret the book for a while as there was some pain caused,” he said. “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. I realized 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."
Red Hot Chili Peppers released their latest album, Return of the Dream Canteen, in 2022. The band were recently named as headliners for this year's Bonnaroo festival.
