The life and career of Paul Di’Anno, the first frontman of heavy metal legends Iron Maiden, whose unforgettable voice defined the band’s early albums, will be put under the spotlight in the documentary “Di’Anno: Iron Maiden’s Lost Singer,” coming out this summer via Cleopatra Entertainment.
With its honest, intimate approach, director Wes Orshoski’s film manages to capture the late singer as he wrestles with emotional highs and lows toward the end of his life. Featuring James Hetfield (Metallica), Gene Simmons (Kiss), Steve Harris of Iron Maiden, and members of Exodus, Slayer, Megadeth, Overkill and Sepultura, it covers a chapter in the famous vocalist’s story when two Iron Maiden superfans entered his life just as Di’Anno was going through the toughest stretch of it. At first they help him get his health back on track, and that’s followed by a fresh restart of his career.
Di’Anno, who had been confined to a wheelchair since 2010, took another serious turn for the worse during the Covid-19 pandemic, so the two fans launched a fundraising campaign that eventually led to him moving to Croatia, where, backed by fans and doctors, he finally turned things around. Even though he ran out of money, he reconnected with his old Maiden bandmates and even fell in love. In the end, he heroically returned to the stage. All of it is captured in “Di’Anno: Iron Maiden’s Lost Singer,” which Orshoski started filming in 2017.
Born in London, Di’Anno is considered one of the central icons of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, which took off at the turn of the ’70s into the ’80s. He helped Iron Maiden break through on a global scale, playing on their two foundational albums: the self-titled debut “Iron Maiden” from 1980 and its follow-up “Killers,” released in 1981. In one of the most epic sagas in metal history, Di’Anno left Maiden in 1981 (replaced by Bruce Dickinson), setting off an endless wave of debate over which singer was or is the better one. That debate is still going today, almost 50 years later.
Orshoski wrapped the film (shot in England, Croatia, Brazil and the United States of America) just before Di’Anno’s death in October 2024. “Di’Anno: Iron Maiden’s Lost Singer” has been screened at European film festivals and will be released worldwide on streaming services and on DVD and BLU RAY.
