Netflix Drops Trailer for ‘James Hetfield: The Untold Story’ – A Raw Dive Into the Man Behind the Metal

In a two-minute trailer that feels like a riff straight from the soul, Netflix just ripped open the vault on James Hetfield’s life with “James Hetfield: The Untold Story,” a documentary that promises to be the heaviest confession in rock history.

Premiering December 23, 2025, the film opens with a single, grainy 8mm clip: 17-year-old James in a Downey, California garage in 1981, screaming into a cheap mic while Cliff Burton nods approval on bass.
Cut to 62-year-old James watching the same footage in his Colorado studio, eyes wet, voice gravelly as ever: “That kid thought anger was his only friend. Turns out it was his worst enemy.” Directed by Oscar-nominated Jonas Åkerlund (Lords of Chaos), this isn’t a Metallica band doc—it’s a unflinching portrait of the man who turned teenage rage into thrash metal’s Bible.

For the first time, Hetfield lets the cameras into the shadows: the rehab room where he hit bottom in 2001, handcuffed and howling; the empty Moscow arena in 1991 where he broke down mid-“Fade to Black” because the crowd sang louder than his demons; the quiet Colorado morning in 2024 when he wrote his first sober love song for his wife Francesca.
He speaks without filter about losing Cliff Burton in 1986—”I wrote ‘Dyers Eve’ that night, but the real scream came later”—about the 2016 overdose that nearly ended it all, about learning to hold his daughters without shaking from withdrawal. “I spent decades screaming at the world,” he says, fingers tracing invisible scars. “Now I just want it to hear me breathe.”

The core of the film is a shoebox of cassette tapes James recorded for himself between tours—private rants in that whiskey baritone.
We hear 28-year-old James after the Black Album: “Millionaire and still sleeping in the bathtub so the walls stop spinning.” We hear 42-year-old James post-rehab: “Day one again. Don’t fuck this up, Hetfield.” We hear 62-year-old James now: “I finally like the guy on the tape. Took long enough.”

Bandmates and survivors become quiet witnesses: Lars Ulrich admits he feared James wouldn’t live to 40; Kirk Hammett tears up showing the first guitar James ever gave him; Francesca reads a letter from the night he proposed—”I’m broken, but I’ll spend every day gluing myself back together for you.”
The trailer ends with James alone in the garage where Metallica began, playing a stripped acoustic “Nothing Else Matters” that somehow sounds heavier than the original, singing one new line: “The last melody isn’t silence… it’s the sound of finally being okay.”

Within four hours the trailer hit 84 million views, crashed Netflix’s rock category, and turned #HetfieldDoc into a global vigil of redemption.
Fans are posting garage videos of themselves playing “Master” on busted amps. Streams of “The Unforgiven” spiked 3,100%. Even Dave Mustaine shared the trailer with three words: “Respect, brother. Always.”

This isn’t a documentary.
It’s absolution with distortion.
James Hetfield didn’t just let us in; he handed us the ashes and showed us how he built a life from them.
And on December 23, when the world presses play,
we won’t just hear Metallica.
We’ll hear a man who learned that the heaviest riff
isn’t played on six strings.
It’s played on a heart that refused to quit.