Bowie's 'Lost' 1978 Tour Film Stage to Play Arenas in 2027

David Bowie's never-released 1978 Isolar II tour film will reach arenas in 2027, almost 50 years after the original run. Titled Stage, it has been remastered from 35mm by Brett Morgen, director of the Bowie documentary Moonage Daydream, which won best music film at the 2024 Grammy awards.

Bowie commissioned David Hemmings, the Blow-Up star turned director, to film two London shows at Earls Court in summer 1978. The concerts centred on the albums Low and "Heroes". Bowie had recently worked with Hemmings on the critically maligned film Just a Gigolo, alongside Marlene Dietrich.

Why did the footage stay unseen for 50 years?

Bowie intended the film for release, and his associates say he wanted it to play in nontraditional venues in lieu of touring. After Isolar II, he did not tour again until the 1983 Serious Moonlight run. He moved quickly on to other projects: recording Lodger, working on unreleased music with John Cale, and making Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps).

A live album from the tour, Stage, recorded at US dates in spring 1978, appeared that autumn. The film never followed. "I simply didn't like the way it had been shot," Bowie said in 2000. "Now, of course, it looks pretty good and I would suspect that it would make it out some time in the future."

For fans, the film became a holy grail, alongside Bowie's lost 1966 TV debut on Ready Steady Go! as David Bowie and the Buzz, and the original 1972 TV performance of Starman on Lift Off With Ayshea, two weeks before the Top of the Pops appearance that changed young viewers' lives across the UK.

When Morgen took the Moonage Daydream job, he asked to see Hemmings' original film. His footage of "Heroes" appeared in the documentary, and many fans cited it as a highlight, sharpening appetite for the full tour film.

What does the arena version look like?

The arena idea was born in 2018. Morgen then spent years restoring the original 35mm, with meticulous colour grading, relighting and hand painting. In the new Stage incarnation, the concert footage will play across multiple screens, with a lighting show by Patrick Woodroffe and an immersive audio mix by Paul Massey. A press release says advanced transparent LED screens will "create the illusion that Bowie and his band are physically present on stage", "enveloping audiences in the atmosphere of a full-scale rock concert for an unprecedented live experience".

The trailer shows a young man in a leopard print jacket with his girlfriend. That was Mark Adams, who 21 years later began working for Bowie and still does. He had no idea the footage existed until it was shown to the team recently.

Who played on the Isolar II tour?

The tour ran from March to December 1978. Each concert split into two parts: the first focused on Low and "Heroes", the second on early 70s hits, including songs from Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. The band comprised guitarist Carlos Alomar, bassist George Murray, drummer Dennis Davis, keyboardist Roger Powell, pianist Sean Mayes and violinist Simon House. Brian Eno was due to join but withdrew over health issues.

NME's Nick Kent called them "his finest [band] by a mile". Reviewing Earls Court, Kent wrote: "Bowie was constantly onstage, a model of agility, and physical grace, determinedly 'projecting' while singing loud and dear in a voice that has seldom sounded better … That shimmering sizzle, that fizzy brilliance that is undeniably attuned to Bowie's work, was all there … It impressed me, it entertained me and very occasionally had me almost spellbound."

Fan site David Bowie World called the Earls Court shows "among the most important British concerts" of Bowie's late-70s career, "a period in which Bowie had moved away from the elaborate stage characters of earlier years and placed an increasing emphasis on musicianship, arrangements, sound and atmosphere".

Stage will premiere at the 77th Berlin film festival in February before touring. Morgen also directed Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck and Crossfire Hurricane, about the Rolling Stones; Woodroffe has designed lighting for Abba, the Stones, Michael Jackson and the London 2012 Olympic Games. Whether transparent LED screens can deliver the presence Kent described in 1978 is the question the 2027 tour will answer.