Matt Johnson Says Finding Cult Fame from Comedy ‘Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie’ Has Been ‘a Major Adjustment’ (Exclusive)

‘Tony’ director Matt Johnson tells PEOPLE about getting used to life with a cult fanbase after the success of his comedy ‘Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie,’ which was released in February and is one of the best-reviewed movies of 2026.

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Tony director Matt Johnson tells PEOPLE about getting used to life with a cult fanbase after the success of his comedy Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, which released in February

The movie is a time-travel-themed comedy inspired by Back to the Future, in which Johnson and Toronto-based musician and actor Jay McCarrol play fictionalized versions of themselves

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, as well as the series it is based on, is streaming on Hulu now

The man behind the new Anthony Bourdain biopic Tony is having quite the year, beyond the release of his new movie starring Dominic Sessa.

Matt Johnson is a Canadian filmmaker and actor who rose to prominence after directing the 2022 movie BlackBerry, about the rise and fall of the titular smartphone. Johnson, 40, also has a long-running collaboration with fellow Toronto-based musician, writer and actor Jay McCarrol. In the late 2000s, the pair created a web series titled Nirvanna the Band the Show, in which they portray fictional versions of themselves in Toronto as they go to increasingly wild lengths to try and book a show for their band, humorously named Nirvanna.

Nearly two decades and one television series adaptation later, Johnson and McCarrol, 43, found cult fame from their film adaptation Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, which hit theaters across North America in February.

The movie holds incredibly positive reviews from critics and fans alike on Rotten Tomatoes and won the People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival and six total Canadian Screen Awards this past May. Suddenly, Johnson’s public exposure has increased significantly.

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“I don’t know if there’s a craziest thing [to fame],” Johnson says, while he and Tony star Sessa, 23, discussed the movie with PEOPLE recently. “It’s certainly a major adjustment for me because I think, like Dom, like to live a pretty private life. I live in Toronto with my friends. I have, now with Dom, maybe what, like, eight friends in the world? So it has been taking a lot of getting used to.”

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie requires some patience from the uninitiated to understand at first: The film is a time-travel-themed comedy inspired by Back to the Future, in which Johnson and McCarrol — as fictional versions of themselves — accidentally travel back in time to 2008 during one of their oddball schemes to book a show for their band at a modest Toronto nightclub.

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“It’s a damn tragedy that people who like that movie are then forced to be basically in the position of Matt, the character, of needing to explain something insane to a bystander as if there is something brain dead in you,” Johnson says.

Despite the heady elevator pitch, the movie is packed to the brim with laughter that requires no knowledge of Johnson and McCarrol’s previous web series or ViceLand show. Nirvanna the Band the Show and the movie itself are now streaming on Hulu.

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Between that movie’s success and positive reviews for Tony, Johnson has found himself a public figure for the first time.

“At the screening we did in Los Angeles last night [for Tony], there were hundreds of people who wanted to meet and talk and spend time together,” Johnson says. “And that’s a very new experience for me. Normally, the life of an independent filmmaker making movies that are ostensibly, like, about my own life, doesn’t garner that kind of attention.”

In 2025, Deadline reported that Johnson will next direct a movie adaptation of Magic: The Gathering, as well as an untitled movie starring Finn Wolfhard, as The Hollywood Reporter reported in May. Until then, Tony is in theaters now.

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