Following his acting debut last year, and encouragement from major players, US musician Jon Batiste’s interest in film has only grown.
Batiste made his debut in the 2024 film Saturday Night, which he also scored, starring alongside Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, and Dylan O’Brien, among others.
It follows the 90-minute journey before NBC’s Saturday Night Live premiere in 1975, plagued with chaos, frenzy, and disorganisation. Based on the true story, it shows how a group of young comedians and writers changed late-night television forever.
Read more: ‘The Right Price Can Silence the Voice of Free Speech’: Jon Batiste Backs Former Colleague Stephen Colbert After ‘Late Show’ Axing
Director Jason Reitman became a dear friend of Batiste’s, and has been a huge encouragement since. Other mentors, he said, include George Lucas, who of course created the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises.
“We’ve watched films together and [I’ve been] just picking his brain and getting a sense of what he thinks about things. He’s someone who did the incredible feat of imagining something that doesn’t exist, and then creating the technology to make the creative vision happen,” Batiste told Rolling Stone AU/NZ in a recent interview.
“And that’s exciting for me because we’re in this time where there’s so much possibility. There’s more possibility now than ever. And it’s up to us as creatives… to lead the tech. It shouldn’t be the other way around.”
Love Music?
Get your daily dose of everything happening in Australian/New Zealand music and globally.
View this post on Instagram
He told Rolling Stone AU/NZ he “want[s] to get into it, but really more from the perspective of directing”.
“I want to make films and I want films that allow for me to play a role in them, but also for there to be this three dimensional thing of unspooling a narrative, creating the musical world that the narrative is scored by, and being a character in the world that I’ve created,” he explained.
This thinking, that creative should lead tech, was also behind his brand new album BIG MONEY: “That’s why I made this album the way we made it – organic, communal. We have to be the visionaries of the tech. We can’t let the tech dictate how we live. We can’t let the algorithm prescribe how we live.”
With BIG MONEY, Batiste explores “the real currency of life” – subjects, cultures and traditions in the past and what is still to come. It’s a theme he’s held in his music for many years, or what he described as “social music”.
He told Rolling Stone AU/NZ that his 2026 plans include heading to Australia for a tour to promote the new album, so his acting career may have to wait.
“I’m excited to to work on things in that large of a scale and obviously that takes time and I have to be not in a music season,” he explained.
“I have to be in a season where I have the time to let my abilities lead me to that destination.”
