As our story unfolds, SUB-POP Records founders Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman journey from broke music fans to partners with Warner Music Group, an odyssey that will test their friendship and their core values and  independent-spirit of the music they each love in the face sudden and overwhelming success.

Along the way, they avoid bankruptcy and other catastrophes by enlisting the help of a smart, savvy former roadie, Megan Jasper, who acts as our narrator.

Sub-Pop and its bands were the antithesis of the slick, commercial, hair-band drivel that dominated the music of the ‘80s. The label, which has since become a universally recognizable brand, is synonymous with the music era of Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and others who were continuing the punk rock spirit of half a generation prior.

But for the people whose musical and iconoclastic ideas coagulated into what would be called “grunge”, the sudden, enormous embrace of their sound and aesthetic by the very mainstream that they desperately wanted to distance themselves from was as difficult as it was rewarding.

This success created a deep psychological dilemma for many of the key players, on one hand loving the rewards, on the other hating themselves for it as they try to reconcile their underground, punk rock, DIY mindsets with corporate riches and embrace by the MTV crowd.

They were fast on the track to becoming part of the marketable cookie-cutter dreck that they had always railed against. This struggle between staying authentic to the indie spirit and selling-out influences the arc of the key characters in ‘Sub-Pop’ as they deal with the decision to embrace the mainstream.

Sub-Pop Records is one of the music industry’s most respected and enduring labels, renowned for its early discovery of rock legends Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, Soundgarden and Green River (later Pearl Jam), its long time embrace of indie rock music and its audacious selling of the so-called grunge music movement to the world.

How did this woefully underfinanced pipedream, spearheaded by two music-loving business neophytes, each very different from the other—and assisted by a former roadie for the indie band Dinosaur Jr. —combine forces through guile, humor, slight-of-hand, heartache and balls-to-the-wall persistence and passion to pull this off?

“Sub-Pop” details the incredible and inspiring journey of three outsiders— Bruce Pavitt, Jonathan Poneman and Megan Jasper as they traverse uncharted waters in the then-unheralded backwater of Seattle, Washington and defy great odds to create what many consider to be the last great movement in the history of rock music.

But when the label “sells out” to Warner Brothers in a $20 million dollar joint venture, relations between Jonathan and Bruce begin to fray as differences in their musical and business instincts, long suppressed, are brought to the surface and the label loses the quirkiness that made it great in the first place.

It will be up to Megan, exiled but not forgotten, to return and give the label its mojo back.

The story of SUB-POP is a dramatic journey filled with nostalgia, humor, failure, success, and the price of staying true to one’s core values. It’s also about the building of a very unique business that influenced the culture and ethos of an entire generation.

But underneath lurks the anguish that takes hold among those whose unique culture and identity comes into the spotlight and becomes a commodity to be marketed and exploited.

Willful, often spacey, emotional, and passionate with a heart firmly on his sleeve, Bruce is the label’s idea man and the brains behind the look and feel of Sub Pop’s early releases. A journalist and DJ, Bruce is armed with a guru’s knowledge of the techniques utilized by the great indie labels that came before him, Blue Note, Factory and Motown. Bruce is the label’s original founder, having bootstrapped Sub Pop’s early incarnation, first as a fanzine for followers of regional indie scenes through the U.S. and later, via a vinyl collection —Sub-Pop 100—which featured bands like Sonic Youth and Green River.  Later, he’ll embrace local promoter Jonathan Poneman as Sub-Pop’s co-founder.

Sub Pop started as Bruce’s thing. He had knowledge and connectivity to the music scene in the U.S. that no one else had. I was actually intimidated by what he knew.

—Jonathan Poneman:

Jonathan is the solid, steady, keep-the-train-on-the-track counterpoint to Bruce’s manic, mile-a-minute flow of ideas as Sub-Pop fights day-to-day to stay afloat. A former musician who threw in the towel to become a promoter, Jonathan has a wry sense of humor and a strong instinct for irony, qualities essential in helping him navigate Sub-Pop’s early operational waters and Bruce’s often shifting moods. In the partnership, Jonathan will become Sub Pop’s less visible, unsung hero, finding the capital to give the label its formal launch, persuading Bruce to embrace Kurt Cobain and shouldering much of the burden of Sub-Pop’s constant money crunch. But when Sub-Pop experiences its first big blast of success, the pair’s essential differences in terms of taste in music and ambition will drive them apart.

I never could have built Sub Pop without Jonathan. Things that would destroy me for days would just roll off his back. In the face of insurmountable events, he just never gave up.

—Bruce Pavitt

A fearless, ex-college DJ turned roadie with verbal stylings that would make a hardened sailor blush (and Monty Python writers jealous), Megan’s character will grow to embody Sub-Pop’s spiritual core.  Years earlier, in the rough and tumble rock scene of Boston, she learned to go toe to toe with her male counterparts both in her knowledge of music and in her ability to practice radical honesty when others might be timid. After showing up and starting work at Sub-Pop with no formal interview, Megan’s spirit and antics will formulate the basis for much of the label’s ethos and key ideas until she is let go when the label stands at death’s door. But Sub-Pop will soon learn that it can’t function without her.

Megan became Sub-Pop’s air traffic controller. When she wasn’t there the place got very quiet. There’s a reason why she runs the company today.

—Bruce Pavitt

Adam Merims, Producer. Over the past 30 years, Mr. Merims has produced 25 films including Straight Outta Compton and King Richard.

Leigh Savidge, screenwriter & Executive Producer. Mr. Savidge wrote the original drafts for Straight Outta Compton for which he received an Oscar nomination. He has produced and/or directed a number of documentaries on music-related figures and subjects including, Death Row Records, Mahalia Jackson, Eminem, Reggaeton and the forthcoming documentary, Becoming Andy Warhol.

The project has the full support of the Sub-Pop label in Seattle (which is also Mr. Savidge’s hometown).

The story of Sub Pop Records is the rock story that ran concurrently with the story of the rise of the west coast rap movement which played so successfully in Straight Outta Compton.

It taps that vein of ’90s nostalgia that works so well in this current environment; a music story of equal interest to baby boomers, their adult children, and among teenagers whose passion for the era —and the musical acts that defined it— is readily apparent in the numbers of Kurt Cobain shirts evident on every street corner in the world.

Script has been vetted by an experienced music supervisor,  who has advised us that we should not expect any significant hurdles in clearing to music at the core of the film.

Current Deliverables

Original screenplay / S. Leigh Savidge

Original Shopping Agreement / Sub Pop Records Owner Jonathan Poneman

Life Rights Agreements For Key Sub Pop Principals Megan Jasper, Jonathan Poneman & Bruce Pavitt (pending)

Sub Pop Rights Agreement (pending)