King Diamond has confirmed that a feature documentary about his life has been in production for the last three years — and that the crew has dug up material even he had not seen.
Speaking to Frank Godla of Metal Injection, the Danish singer, who fronts both KING DIAMOND and MERCYFUL FATE, said the film is directed by journalist and documentary filmmaker Frederik Brun Madsen from a screenplay by Peter Engel, produced by UpNorth Film AS — Christian Aune Falch, Torstein Parelius and Sondre Johansen — in co-production with Wingman Media. Crucially, it carries the backing of the Danish National Film Institute.
"There's a King Diamond movie that has been filmed over the last three years," he said. "It's been fully supported by the Danish National Film Institute. They're trying to do it full on with going to the film festivals and all this stuff. It's a full-blown movie, and it's not your average standard documentary."
What makes it unusual, by his account, is how far back the research goes. Rather than starting at MERCYFUL FATE, the filmmakers went hunting for the bands nobody documents. "They found the old bandmembers from BRAINSTORM from 1976. '78, BLACK ROSE members, and up to 1980, BLACK ROSE," he said. They also turned up footage of BLACK ROSE playing live at what he remembers as a small mini mall outside Copenhagen, around early 1978 — one of the first times he ever sang live. "It didn't sound bad. It was weird. But we played 'Space Truckin'' without even a keyboard."
As for what the film is actually about, he keeps it simple: "It's pretty much a story about a kid from Denmark with very big dreams who had practically no chance of having that come true, but somehow it really did. This film crew, the way they go about researching things is unbelievable."
There is plenty of story to work with. King Diamond has been one of metal's most recognisable figures for more than forty years, cited by METALLICA and PANTERA alike, and turned up as a playable character in "Guitar Hero: Metallica" in 2009. The band's most recent album remains 2007's Grammy-nominated "Give Me Your Soul…Please", with the horror trilogy opener "Saint Lucifer's Hospital 1920" still ahead — trailed since the 2024 single "Spider Lilly", which featured Myrkur and was filmed at the Pennhurst Asylum outside Philadelphia.