Liam and Noel Gallagher, to perhaps nobody’s surprise, aren’t ones for getting teary-eyed, even when reconciling after well over a decade apart. So say Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern, directors of the upcoming Disney+ documentary “Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger,” speaking to Variety ahead of the film’s world premiere in Venice. In early 2025, the pair, who were behind music docs “Shut Up and Play the Hits” and “Meet Me in the Bathroom,” were given the unique opportunity of capturing the years-in-the-making reunion between arguably the most famous — and famously feuding — brothers in rock and roll as they began rehearsals for what would become Oasis’ record-breaking and wildly-anticipated world tour.
It was a privileged view.” Unfortunately, privileged or not, that view wasn’t actually from within the studio, with the filmmakers having decided that, for the seismic and long-awaited reuniting of the Gallaghers, it was best if they simply weren’t there. We didn’t want it to feel like there’s an annoying camera crew running around getting in their way,” says Southern. But there weren’t fireworks, as many had predicted.
Nor were there any watery-eyed hugs between long-lost siblings. There was no kind of messing around. As soon as Liam arrived, it’s like, ‘Right, are we doing this?’ And they were just going through the whole set.
But it’s sort of fascinating to watch that process and then the subtleties of their interactions, because there was no huge kind of coming together.” But this fuss-free, workmanlike approach was all part and parcel of, as Lovelace describes it, “the serious business of putting on the biggest rock and roll comeback the world’s ever seen.” And, once the rehearsals wrapped and the Oasis tour began — starting in the U.K. before heading to Ireland, Canada, the U.S., Korea, Japan, Australia and South America — their no-nonsense fine-tuning of their act after so long apart paid off. They put the work in,” says Lovelace. The concerts — especially that very first comeback gig in Cardiff — also helped throw water on whatever friction there might have still been between the Gallaghers (many joked that they’d have broken up again long before the tour was supposed to finish).
That was a real moment of alchemy. It was like something incredibly special happens when these people who’ve been waiting 16 years for this momentous thing to happen got it.” And the brothers did want it to happen, the directors claim. While the vast sums of money earned from the tour had led many to believe it was simply an exercise in fortune-making, they assert that it became much more important to them.
Lovelace notes that, in the years leading up to the reunion when there was endless speculation whether or not it could ever happen, it seemed like Noel was the more reluctant while it was Liam who had expressed enthusiasm. There’s a little kind of: Could this go wrong? But we felt like they were hyper-focused and it wasn’t just a case of let’s turn up and play the gigs and take the money.
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