How the ‘Nirvanna the Band’ duo’s troublemaking stunts became a chaotic Toronto film

TORONTO — What started as a throwaway joke between two friends has ballooned into a bit they’ve committed to for nearly half their lives.

For Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol, that joke is Nirvanna the Band — a fictional Toronto duo whose eternal, doomed quest to play local venue the Rivoli spawned a guerrilla web series turned cult TV hit.

Now it’s a feature film: “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie,” a time-hopping bromantic odyssey already drawing outsized enthusiasm south of the border.

“It feels pretty surreal because we haven’t changed anything about how we’ve made the show since we were kids,” McCarrol says of the film, out Friday.

“We’re showing so much of our real selves in our little boyhood journey, and now it’s on an actual movie screen.”

Johnson and McCarrol met in high school, introduced by Johnson’s then-girlfriend.

“We became fast friends. We both loved the camera and making skits and being total idiots,” recalls Johnson, now 40.

After university, the two moved to downtown Toronto with little more than ambition and time, renting an apartment next to the Rivoli — a modest venue they’d heard the Kids in the Hall used to perform at.

It became the perfect obsession for their semi-fictional alter egos: two bumbling musicians whose increasingly convoluted plans to score a gig there always collapse.

“It just came out as one world-building idea, and we laughed at it, probably because the Rivoli kind of sounds funny too,” says McCarrol, who’s 43.

The show’s format — heavily improvised, shot in public with unsuspecting participants folded into the narrative — was shaped by early internet influences like comedy series Mega64.

“It was cosplaying in public, but they took it really, really far and the people around them would react, like, ‘Oh my God, what is this?'” says Johnson.

The duo envisioned a “Nirvanna” movie after their Viceland series ended in 2018, but their freewheeling approach made financing tricky. Johnson says it wasn’t until he directed 2023’s “BlackBerry” — the tech drama that became the most awarded film at the Canadian Screen Awards — that Telefilm agreed to back the project.

“I knew taking this very scripted, very historical Canadian movie very seriously would afford me the freedom to make things in my own style in a way I never could before,” he says.

The film finds Johnson and McCarrol exactly where we left them: still scheming, and spectacularly failing, to play the Rivoli. Only now, their antics are bigger and dumber, from death-defying stunts to a time-travel mishap that threatens their friendship. They barrel past heaps of red tape — from the TTC to Drake’s house — along the way.

In one scene, they smuggle wire cutters and parachutes into the CN Tower, plotting to jump from the EdgeWalk into the Rogers Centre during a Blue Jays game to generate buzz for their band.

“I don’t think we can tell anybody how we did that, because it’s still an open question as to whether or not we’re going to get in trouble for what we did,” says Johnson.

Their original plan was apparently even more unhinged.


“I was going to sneak on and do the first pitch, and Jay was going to escort me there dressed as the mascot,” explains Johnson.


“We shot that, and there were a lot of problems. We got in a lot trouble.“

They say the sequence may find its way into Season 3 of their show, now in the works.

The film is full of hyper-local Toronto references, but they don’t believe that has limited its appeal.

“We’ve now screened the movie some 20 times for Americans and it is a different thing,” says Johnson. The film releases stateside via indie distributor Neon.

“They like it way more than Canadians do. It’s not even close. It’s embarrassing.”

McCarrol attributes this to a familiar national hesitation around homegrown content.

“So many generations have gone through Canadian content trying to punch above its weight class that when they’re presented anything that is so obviously Canadian, their spidey sense goes up,” he says.

Much of the humour comes from real-world encounters with people — security guards, Canadian Tire managers, random passersby — whose unplanned reactions often steer the story.

“You’re trying to make your story happen in the real world and when unsuspecting people help you, it’s incredible,” says Johnson, noting producers later secure consent to use those reactions.

“It feels like a miracle.”

Johnson says the process “couldn’t be more different” from making “Tony,” his upcoming A24 biopic about late celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain.

“When I’m directing a real movie, quote unquote, it’s like I’m a different person… I’m like a quiet, friendly helper trying to get everybody pointing the same way,” he says.”

“With Nirvanna the Band, what you see is what you get — 90 per cent of whatever I’m doing is captured on camera.”

Using their original crew — including producer Matthew Miller and cinematographer Jared Raab — keeps the process feeling lawless, despite the institutional support.

“It’s a lot closer to the way kids make a movie together, where they don’t know what they’re doing, and they just go and shoot whatever they can,” Johnson says.

It’s a chaotic method, but nearly half their lives later, it’s still working.

“Even if we have a better budget to work with, we don’t want things to change,” says McCarrol.

“We just want to make the same thing better.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 11, 2026.

Alex Nino Gheciu, The Canadian Press