The Grateful Dead Movie and Dead & Company’s Golden Gate show will hit the big screen
The Grateful Dead is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, from the massive 60-CD box set Enjoying the Ride to a book of rare Jim Marshall photographs. Now, the long, strange trip continues with two separate screenings on IMAX.
Dead & Company — the offshoot that celebrated its 10th anniversary this year with another residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas — will livestream the last of their three shows in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. That live IMAX event takes place on Aug. 3, and features an opening set by the Trey Anastasio Band. The tickets come with a poster and lanyard.
In addition, The Grateful Dead Movie will hit IMAX screens in select theaters on Aug. 14 (with an advanced preview on Aug. 13). The 1977 film captures the band’s five-night stand at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom in October of 1974, what they believed at the time to be their final run of shows. Co-directed by Jerry Garcia and Leon Gast, it marks the film’s first time on the big screen in eight years, and its first time being shown via IMAX.
Fans can also see the theatrical premiere of a bonus live performance of “China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider,” which they can catch at the end of the film. “It was the greatest screening I’ve ever experienced of a film I’ve seen hundreds of times,” the band’s archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux said of the IMAX screening.
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In December 2024, the Dead were honored at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and were celebrated as MusiCares’ Persons of the Year in January in Los Angeles. Just before bassist Phil Lesh died last fall, Bobby Weir told Rolling Stone the band was considering reuniting for the anniversary. “I think when Phil checked out, so did that notion, because we don’t have a bass player who’s been playing with us for 60 years now,” he said. “And that was the intriguing prospect. … I think you need somebody holding down the bottom. Phil had all kinds of ideas that were pretty much unique to him. I grew up with Phil holding down the bottom in his unique way.”
He added: “I suppose I could go back out. I wouldn’t put anybody in his place, so it would be a trio at this point. It’d be me and two drummers. I’d have to think about that. I haven’t thought about it — it’s just now occurring to me that it’s a possibility that we could do that, since you asked. … I guess we’ll just see what the three of us can pull together.”
