Sex Pistols TV show: Watch the trailer for Danny Boyle's new series Pistol

5 April 2022, 11:29

Watch the official teaser for Pistol

A first look at Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, Paul Cook, Steve Jones and Glen Matlock.

Danny Boyle's upcoming Sex Pistols TV series has already attracted plenty of controversies.

Titled Pistol, the show is based on guitarist Steve Jones's 2017 memoir Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol.

• Legendary rock 'n' roll photographer Mick Rock dies, aged 72
• The Monkees' 10 greatest songs ever, ranked

While the FX show has the blessing of Jones, drummer Paul Cook and original bassist Glen Matlock, singer John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) tried to veto the inclusion of the Sex Pistols' music, and launched a failed lawsuit over the matter.

Now, a teaser trailer, release date and first-look pictures of the show have been released.

"Never mind the bollocks, here's the premiere date," said the network on Twitter.

"FX's Pistol, a new limited series from Executive Producer and Academy Award®-winner Danny Boyle and based on a memoir from Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones, premieres May 31 only on @Hulu."

All six episodes of the show will be available to stream on May 31 on Disney+ in the UK.

Pistol stars Toby Wallace as Steve Jones, Anson Boon as John Lydon, Christian Lees as Glen Matlock, Louis Partridge as Sid Vicious, and Jacob Slater as Paul Cook.

It also features Sydney Chandler as Chrissie Hynde, Talulah Riley as Vivienne Westwood, Maisie Williams as Jordan, Emma Appleton as Nancy Spungen and Thomas Brodie-Sangster as Malcolm McLaren.

"Malcolm's direction was always to challenge the order of things," Danny Boyle told Deadline and other reporters.

"That was part of the journey. From chaos came creativity, and how we created this, that’s what we hope to achieve. Culture should always do that, it should always challenge the order of things."

Of the conflict with Lydon, he said: "I hope he does watch this and realise, especially in Anson [Boon, who plays Lydon], how much we love his work, the Oscar Wilde in him."

Pistol is far from the first time the Sex Pistols story has been put on screen.

Julien Temple's 1980 film The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle gave Malcolm McClaren's vision of the band in a stylised fictional telling of the story, while Alex Cox's dramatic Sid & Nancy focused on the life and death of Vicious and his girlfriend Nancy Spungeon.

Sex Pistols - The Filth and the Fury movie trailer

Temple's 2000 The Filth and the Fury was a much straighter documentary, which focused on new talking head interviews with Lydon, Cook, Jones and Matlock alongside footage of Sid, who died in 1979 at the age of 21.

Lydon has also written his own memoirs, with 1993's Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs and 2014's Anger Is an Energy: My Life Uncensored.

Glen Matlock covered the time in his 1996 book I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol.