A multi-part documentary spotlight on Bon Jovi, Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story, will be coming to Hulu in the next several months, the streaming service announced on Jan. 22. The four-part series, directed by Gotham Chopra, will begin streaming on April 26.
The announcement was timed to the 40th anniversary of Bon Jovi’s self-titled debut album (which was released on Jan. 21, but close enough). Though that album only had one single, “Runaway,” crack the top 40, the group’s subsequent records would make it one of the biggest rock bands of the 1980s.
Jon Bon Jovi onstage in 2017.
“As thrilling as the story of a once-in-a-lifetime talent is, it is even more rare that a legend like Jon Bon Jovi lets the world into his most vulnerable moments while he’s still living them,” Hulu said in a statement. “Forty years of personal videos, unreleased early demos, original lyrics and never-before-seen photos that chronicle the journey from Jersey Shore clubs to the biggest stages on the planet. The series relives the triumphs and setbacks, greatest hits, biggest disappointments and most public moments of friction.”
The son of New Age author Deepak Chopra, Gotham Chopra previously directed the documentary Decoding Deepak, about his father, as well as the Tom Brady docuseries Tom vs Time and Man in the Arena: Tom Brady.
The group at the American Music Awards in 2004.
According to the release, the film features “full cooperation from all past and present members of Bon Jovi.” That would seem to include not only frontman Jon Bon Jovi and his current four bandmates, but also longtime guitarist Richie Sambora, who co-wrote most of the group’s songs during his 30-year tenure in the band, from 1983-2013. Alec John Such, the band’s original bass player, died in 2022.
After two moderately well-received albums in the mid-‘80s, Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet hit No. 1 in 1986, going on to be certified 12x platinum by the RIAA. Follow-up New Jersey topped the charts as well, and the group returned to the No. 1 spot four times in the current millennium: with 2007’s Lost Highway, 2009’s The Circle, 2013’s What About Now and 2016’s This House Is Not for Sale. The group notched four No. 1 singles between 1986 and 1989: “You Give Love a Bad Name,” “Livin’ on a Prayer,” “Bad Medicine” and “I’ll Be There for You.” The group was inducted in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.
The group was also the subject of a feature documentary in 2009: director Phil Giffin’s Bon Jovi: When We Were Beautiful premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, and later screened on Showtime.
