In late February, Patently Apple posted a report titled “Apple Original Films announces a mew groundbreaking documentary event titled 'Bono: Stories of Surrender'.” It will air on Apple TV+ on May 30th. Today, Deadline posted a long expose about Bono and the film. More importantly, Bono talks about the film customized for Apple’s extended reality headset, Vision Pro.

Deadline noted about the film that Bono laid bare his transformation from Dublin lad Paul Hewson into a global rock star and human rights crusader in his memoir Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story. Now, premiering at Cannes, comes the Andrew Dominik-directed documentary Bono: Stories of Surrender. Culled from the U2 frontman’s 2023 one-man show at New York’s Beacon Theater, Bono weaves performances of his best-known hit songs into a tale of a youngster suffering the shocking loss of his mother and trying in vain to get the needed acknowledgment from a grieving father who withdrew and never mentioned his dead wife in their Dublin home. The need to fill the void and to be seen and heard led to a miracle. In the span of a week, the 16-year-old Bono found the family that would sustain him. In short order, he fell in love with future wife Ali, and found his bandmates Dave Evans (The Edge), Larry Mullen Jr and Adam Clayton.

The band they formed, U2, would go on to become one of the biggest in history, selling 170 million albums worldwide and winning a record-breaking 22 Grammys.

Bono’s lifelong activism began early too. In 1983, U2 released the album War, and the polemically charged song “Sunday Bloody Sunday” about the futility of violence with occupying British forces in Ireland. Then, in 1985, they answered pal Bob Geldof’s call to perform at Live Aid, which raised hundreds of millions to feed starving refugees in Ethiopia. Told that the $250 million raised was comparable to the interest payments starving third world countries were paying to superpower debtor nations, Bono and friends pushed those nations to wipe the debts. The same passion toward wiping out HIV in Africa prompted governments around the world to provide billions of dollars toward the cause.

Bono: Stories of Surrender begins with the singer recalling when a congenital heart condition very nearly killed him in 2016, then expands into an intimate and moving tale of father-son dynamics. Bono came to terms with his chilly relationship with his father through the performances at the Beacon, and the documentary’s climax reveals a great gift Bono received from the prickly fellow he still calls The Da.

The film is the latest move in a long and innovative alliance between Bono and Apple, first with Steve Jobs and later his CEO successor Tim Cook. It began with Bono convincing Jobs to issue an iPod pre-loaded with U2’s music. The relationship took a controversial turn — with an apology from Bono — when the singer crashed the catalogs of Apple Music iTunes customers with free copies of the U2 album Songs of Innocence, whether they wanted it or not.

And now, the relationship continues as the documentary not only will screen on Apple TV+ after Cannes in 2D but a spectacularly immersive version will be available for owners of the Apple Vision Pro. 

Viewing the film through that device reveals a uniquely close and personal experience, complete with Bono’s own drawings that sprout up in the wide frame. Apple pulled out all the stops here, and the technology places the viewer right up there onstage alongside Bono, close enough to see the faint scar in his chest where the heart surgeon saved his life.

Here, Bono discusses why he felt this was the right vehicle for telling his story and why, after U2 christened The Sphere in Las Vegas with sensory overload-level performances, it was important to him to help push the envelope on a more intimate technology that the Vision Pro promises. Mostly, though, this is a discussion about Irish families, and fathers and their sons.

DEADLINE: The first time I saw the film on Apple Vision Pro, I was the proverbial caveman looking at fire. I felt like I was onstage with you. What sparked you to put in that work here to help advance this technology, and where do you see it going in terms of disruptive storytelling?

BONO: Apple have this new sonic innovation commitment to fidelity of sound. Sounds are becoming really important in movies, in people’s home cinemas. The Vision Pro, it’s a commitment. You’re getting into a world, and there are extraordinary things I’ve seen through the Vision Pro. … We had this idea of, well, the camera can be onstage and walking around you. We couldn’t light it as easy as we thought, but we successfully got the viewer on stage. I took out my drawings from the stage show for the filming, and they’re not in the 2D Apple TV+ version of Stories of Surrender, but they are in Vision Pro. Those childlike drawings — no one would like to be able to draw as badly as me — but it’s like a signature, a fingerprint.

DEADLINE: How did it help to personalize an already personal story?

BONO: It made it really playful. I know Apple are dying to make the Vision Pro more affordable and more democratic, but they’re committed to innovation, they’re committed to experimenting. They know not everyone can afford this, but they’re still going for it, believing that some way down the line, it’ll make financial sense for them. But the fact that they may have to wait a while is not putting them off.

The Deadline report is a long expose with many photos that you could review here.

Archive: Apple TV News