Bill Murray is ready to rock audiences with his new concert film.
Nearly four years after the actor-comedian headlined a rousing music-and-poetry performance at the Acropolis in Greece, Murray is excited for moviegoers to experience that night through a filmed version of the show that he believes will surprise viewers.
“It looks like it’s a serious classical concert piece, and it’s frightening,” Murray told the Daily News. “Terrifying at first, but what isn’t anymore? It’s a little scary, but if you just have faith that, among all of us, there’s a drop of consciousness, it’s going to change, it’s going to get better, it’s going to improve, and it does.
“It comes to be just a rollicking entertainment that’s very joyous and very enjoyable and fills your chest with a big breath of air.”
Titled “New Worlds: The Cradle of Civilization,” the concert film debuts Wednesday in select cinemas and will play through Feb. 28.
The film captures the entirety of that 2018 show in Athens, which was part of a sprawling tour Murray embarked on with acclaimed cellist Jan Vogler, violinist Mira Wang and pianist Vanessa Perez.
The quartet’s genre-bending performances featured a wide range of timeless literature and music, with words from Walt Whitman and Ernest Hemingway and music from Johann Sebastian Bach and Leonard Bernstein.
In addition to reading the literature throughout the concert, Murray sang and danced to multiple numbers, including “I Feel Pretty” from Bernstein’s “West Side Story.”
“It was very challenging, which meant that every night we had to really show up to play it,” Murray, 71, recalled. “You couldn’t phone any of this stuff in. The material, the music would spit at you. The words would spit at you if you didn’t bring everything to it.”
The concert tour began as an idea by Vogler, who befriended Murray after sitting next to him on a flight and later became impressed by the actor’s singing as Baloo the bear in the 2016 movie “The Jungle Book.”
“I also saw him read poetry of the great Walt Whitman at a poetry gala here in New York, and that moment, I had this idea,” Vogler told The News. “I was in Montreal, I remember, (when) I sent him a text message and said, ‘Bill, I think we can do a show and go around the world.’”
The tour took the four artists to iconic concert venues such as Manhattan’s famed Carnegie Hall and the Sydney Opera House in Australia.
Filmmaker Andrew Muscato, who directed the “New Worlds” movie, says he aimed to “capture the energy of the live show.”
“I came into this as a friend, but mostly a fan of the work that they had been doing,” Muscato told The News. “I had seen the show when it was at Carnegie Hall. I saw it again in Escondido, California, and what struck me was each show always was a little different in the way they performed the encores, but it always had this almost rock-concert-like energy.”
Murray, who is known for classic films such as “Caddyshack,” “Ghostbusters” and “Groundhog Day,” says the concerts were “really about America, as seen from across the oceans and across the peninsula.”
He credits the Berlin-born Vogler for selecting “essential” American works for the performances.
“(The show) talks about problems we all have or joy we all have,” Vogler, 57, said. “It’s not just for the sophisticated or for the educated. It’s for everyone. We need to spread this word because it will help us in the future, also, to tackle challenges and keep this great country going.”
Murray and Vogler enjoyed electrifying audiences each night during their tour, and are eager for more people to see “New Worlds” through the film.
“You don’t have to know the name of the composer or the name of the piece,” Murray said. “You just have to listen and the power of it enters you. It gets into you, and it affects you.”
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