Garth Jennings has made a movie charting Pulp’s rise from obscurity to cultural touchstone, set to premiere exclusively on Mubi this fall.
The global distributor, streaming service and production company will release Pulp: What Do You Do for An Encore? later this year, The Hollywood Reporter can exclusively report, a project described as in the spirit of 1984 Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense and Martin Scorsese’s beloved The Last Waltz (1978).
Pulp: What Do You Do for an Encore? “fuses the brilliantly choreographed stage spectacle of Pulp’s biggest ever arena show — part of the global tour for More, the band’s first album in 24 years — with four decades of colorful, never-seen-before archival material,” said Mubi. It is narrated by frontman and legendary British rocker Jarvis Cocker and features 20 of the band’s songs.
Jennings (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Son of Rambow, Sing), together with Pulp, answer the question: “What do you do for an encore?” in this tribute to a band of brilliant misfits, whose irony, rebellion and razor-sharp social commentary resonated with a generation of listeners and defined an era of British pop culture.
The film is a Mubi production, directed by Jennings and edited by Barney Pilling (The Grand Budapest Hotel, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris). It is produced by Octavia Peissel (Asteroid City, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar) for Opal Films, Danny Gabai and Amy Rattray for VICE Studios and Paul Dugdale.
Executive producers are Stuart Goldstein, Tom Healy and Rosie Taylor (VICE Studios); Harper Simon and Mark Sainsbury; and Cocker and Jeanette Lee.
Formed in Sheffield in 1978, Pulp initially consisted of Cocker, Russell Senior, Candida Doyle, Nick Banks, Steve Mackey and Mark Webber. They gained prominence in the mid ’90s with His ‘n’ Hers and its follow-up, Different Class, which won the Mercury Prize and reached number one on the U.K. Albums Chart, with the album boasting hit single “Common People.”
Regarded as one of the Britpop “big four,” with Oasis, Blur and Suede, Pulp’s sixth album came in 1998, This Is Hardcore, before the release of We Love Life in 2001. They took a decade-long break following the release of We Love Life, having sold more than 10 million records and headlining Glastonbury twice. They reunited in 2011 to play a slew of festivals. In 2025, Pulp unveiled their first album in 24 years, More.
