blink-182 co-founder Tom DeLonge set to direct film

Feb. 4, 2017 9:39 PM PT

Tom DeLonge is preparing to direct his first feature film.

Entitled “Strange Times,” the movie sounds almost autobiographical, given the blink-182 co-founder’s longtime passions for skateboarding and UFOs.

According to an article in the Hollywood Reporter, “Strange Times” will focus on “a rebellious group of San Diego skateboarders, who take it upon themselves to investigate extreme paranormal activity around town, only to embark on an adventure that they could have never imagined.”

The movie follow’s last year’s release of DeLonge’s books, “Strange Times: The Ghost in the Girl” and “Sekret Machines Book 1: Chasing Shadows.”

DeLonge is co-writing the film the script with Ben Kull, his collaborator on the 2014 animated short film, “Poet Anderson: The Dream Walker.” Music for the film will be provided by Angels & Airwaves, which teams DeLonge with San Diego multi-instrumentalist Ilan Rubin, whose other credits include Nine Inch Nails and Paramore.

The movie will be produced by DeLonge’s company, To The Stars.

“I grew up in Southern California as a disaffected young skateboarder who broke the occasional law or five, and I was always dreaming about the world around me, obsessively looking for the more unusual and imaginative experiences that life has to offer,” DeLonge told The Hollywood Reporter.

“That’s the inspiration behind ‘Strange Times,’ which is about the tribe of broken youth and the restless spirit that inspired me to form blink-182 and seek out adventure.”

DeLonge co-founded blink-182 in Poway in 1992. The pop-punk trio went on to achieve international stardom. In early 2015, DeLonge either quit or was fired from the band.

The group’s subsequent album, “California,” came out in 2016 and features Matt Skiba in place of DeLonge. In December, the album earned blink the band’s first-ever Grammy Award nomination (for Best Rock Album). The 59th annual Grammy Awards will be held Feb. 12 in Los Angeles.
Twitter @georgevarga; george.varga@sduniontribune.com

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George Varga

San Diego Union-Tribune music critic George Varga began drumming in rock bands at 12 and writing professionally about music at 15. A Louisiana native who grew up mostly in Germany, Varga has earned three Pulitzer Prize nominations for his writing at the U-T and is a voting member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to providing live coverage of the Grammy Awards and festivals from Coachella and KAABOO to the 1994 edition of Woodstock, he has interviewed everyone from Miles Davis, Britney Spears and (over a game of chess) Ray Charles to Willie Nelson, Kanye West and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis. A triple first prize-winner for criticism and arts writing at the 2022 San Diego Press Club awards and a first prize-winner at the 2022 San Diego Society of Professional Journalists awards, Varga is also a contributing writer for Jazz Times magazine and has written for Billboard, Spin and other publications. After attending San Diego City College and San Diego State University, he created and taught the 2002 UC San Diego Extension course, “Jazz in a Post-Ken-Burns World.” Varga has written liner notes for more than a dozen albums, including by jazz sax greats James Moody and Michael Brecker, and contributed two chapters to the book, “Dylan: Disc By Disc.”