In an interview with the Hartford Courant, Jones said of the screenplay, "The idea is to get it a little dirtier and a little nastier and translate it into visual terms… There's not going to be a lot of dialogue and it probably should be a little shorter, too. After that, it just takes its 'movie time' in getting done."

He expects to finish the film version for Universal Studios by the end of March.

As previously reported, Tony Award winner Michael Mayer, who staged the 2010 Broadway production, is attached to direct the film.

Mayer conceived and co-wrote the libretto to American Idiot, borrowing all of the songs from the hit album of the same name (and adding other Green Day songs into the mix) to tell a mostly dialogue-free new story about a trio of pals seeking sex, love, drugs, connection and purpose in post-9/11 America.

The Broadway run of American Idiot ran April 20, 2010-April 24, 2011. The intermissionless 90-minute show had a book by Mayer and Armstrong, lyrics by Armstrong and music by Green Day. It was nominated for a Best Musical Tony Award, and won Tonys for its scenic and lighting design.

Additional details on the film — which was originally scheduled to release in 2013 under Tom Hanks' Playtone Productions — have not been announced.