Some movie characters chased glory. The characters in “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie,” however, chased a very specific Toronto gig like it was the Holy Grail—and then, naturally, turned that obsession into a time-travel problem that refused to stay solved.
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To be clear about what this thing spins out of: “Nirvanna the Band the Show” is a Toronto-set mockumentary sitcom created by and starring Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol as fictionalized versions of themselves—two lifelong best friends running elaborate stunts across the city in the hope of getting their band booked at the Rivoli, despite never actually writing or recording a song (and not even taking steps to contact the venue’s management about booking a show).
That’s the baseline delusion, and the newly released trailer suggests the feature doesn’t “graduate” from it so much as crank the same obsession until the universe snaps back. The dream is still ridiculously small—play the Rivoli, a small but legendary club in Toronto—but the collateral damage starts to look mythic, as if reality itself is sick of their persistence and decides to punish them with narrative escalation.
In “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie,” Matt and Jay’s latest Rivoli scheme hinges on a DeLorean-inspired RV, and when it goes wrong, it flings the duo—and their friend/cameraman Jared Raab—back to 2008. From there, the film scrambles to get them back to the present without wrecking the timeline (or whatever scraps of momentum these guys can pretend they still have). If that sounds absurd, well, yeah, that’s the point.
The release path is already a pretty clean “cult object goes big” story: the film premiered at SXSW last year, then landed at the Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness section, where it won the People’s Choice Award.
On the business end, Neon has dated ‘Nirvanna’ for a February 13, 2026, theatrical release in Canada via Elevation Pictures. Watch the new trailer below.
