Billie Eilish and Phoebe Bridgers join My Chemical Romance’s new film

My Chemical Romance and artist Lauren Tsai have released *Prelude to The End*, an animated short featuring voice performances by Billie Eilish, Phoebe Bridgers, Hideo Kojima and John C. McGinley. The film is already available on the band’s official YouTube channel, giving fans something concrete to watch before the group’s Halloween-weekend appearances in Los Angeles. It connects the world of Tsai’s *The Dying World* with music from *The Black Parade*, rather than announcing an entirely new My Chemical Romance album.

The upload runs seven minutes and 42 seconds. YouTube’s publication record dates it to October 29, at 7:05 p.m. Eastern; Friday’s coverage follows that Thursday-evening release. The distinction matters for a project whose title and cast have prompted renewed attention: the new development is a completed, publicly available film, not an unconfirmed rumor about what the band might unveil next.

A short film with its own characters

The reported premise centers on Astrid, a student at a strange New England boarding school, and the threatened loss of her sketchbook. A journey into a realm of abandoned ideas follows. That setup gives the collaboration a narrative subject beyond a familiar band name: what happens to something a person creates when an institution, another person or the creator herself is ready to discard it?

Pitchfork’s reporting identifies Bridgers as Astrid’s sister, Eilish as her friend, Kojima as the Teacher and McGinley as the Dean. Consequence’s account identifies Tsai as Astrid. Those are character performances within a work of fiction. Viewers arriving because they recognize one musician should not expect a conventional concert appearance by the entire voice cast.

The distinction also helps explain the format. A voice contribution can connect an artist to a fictional world without making that performer the film’s author, animator or principal musical act. The official upload foregrounds Tsai’s directing credit and UNREAL INC.’s production credit. Recognizing those roles keeps the creative work visible alongside the celebrity names that attract attention to it.

Why Lauren Tsai’s existing world matters

*The Dying World* was established before this collaboration. The Hollywood Forever venue’s record describes a November 2025 exhibition that placed Astrid inside a constructed house on the cemetery grounds. Drawings, paintings, sculptures, puppets and stop-motion imagery formed part of that installation. The venue’s page identifies a past exhibition; it is background to the new film, not an invitation to an exhibition still running this weekend.

That history supplies useful context for the sketchbook and abandoned-idea premise. Astrid is not simply a character invented to fill the space between anniversary songs. The project has moved through physical settings and different artistic media, with the relationship between imagination, memory and objects at its center. A short film can introduce that world to people who never entered the earlier installation, while longtime followers have a reference point for the character.

Perrotin’s account of its 2026 Art Basel Hong Kong presentation likewise places Tsai’s work across film and installation, and describes an interest in ideas that persist through remembering and forgetting. This is a collaboration between an existing artistic practice and an existing musical world. Understanding both sides makes the project more specific than a generic animated tribute to a rock album.

Tsai also directed the animated video for boygenius’ *Cool About It* in 2023, a previous connection with Bridgers’ musical work. Contemporaneous reporting and the official video link document that credit. It does not mean the current film is a boygenius reunion or a sequel to that video. It shows that the relationship between Tsai’s animation and this circle of musicians predates the new release.

In a January interview with Observer, Tsai described forgotten ideas as beings with a place to exist after people have moved on from them. She also discussed how encountered or invented characters had shaped her personality and outlook. That account gives the sketchbook more significance than a convenient object that starts an adventure: creative work can become part of how someone understands herself, even before another person values it.

The collaboration therefore brings two different kinds of recognition together. A familiar recording carries a listener’s existing associations; an established visual character carries an artist’s own history. Their meeting does not require Astrid to become a literal illustration of every lyric. It allows a different creator to provide characters and a setting through which an older work can reach another audience. That is a useful way to approach the project without demanding that animation function only as promotional decoration.

An anniversary can produce something new

The official YouTube description links the film to *The Black Parade*’s 20th-anniversary deluxe edition. It identifies the original recording and additional material across physical and digital formats. The important distinction for listeners is between a newly released visual work, a revisited album and a new collection of songs. They can appear in the same campaign without being interchangeable products.

Consequence describes the project as bringing Tsai’s imagery together with *The End*, the opening track of *The Black Parade*. That creates a meeting point between the album’s established music and a separate story world. Familiar music can orient an existing audience, while the film’s characters and credited visual creator give newcomers another way into the collaboration. No knowledge of the complete album is required simply to follow the official release link and watch.

An anniversary edition also serves a different purpose from a film. Listeners may want the recorded music, a particular physical format or additional performances; viewers may want the animation. The existence of both does not mean a person must buy merchandise to understand the news. The film’s official public upload is the straightforward starting point for someone interested in the new work itself.

The Hollywood Bowl connection

The live calendar gives the release an immediate setting. Ticketmaster’s official tour help page lists Hollywood Bowl appearances on October 30 and 31, alongside the group’s earlier October dates there. Pitchfork and Consequence report that the film will screen ahead of the two final performances. The concert dates and the reported film presentation are related pieces of information, with different sources supporting them.

Those dates should not be turned into a promise about an unrevealed set list, an additional guest appearance or a future album. A voice credit in a released film does not establish that its performer will appear onstage. Similarly, screening the short before a show is different from announcing a separate theatrical run. Fans planning their evening should use their own ticket and the current official event instructions for entry details.

For everyone else, the online version removes the need to attend a Los Angeles concert to encounter the collaboration. That is the practical value of the release: the same named work is accessible to people who know the band, people who follow Tsai and people who discover it through one of the actors. Geography and concert-ticket availability need not determine whether they can see what was announced.

What to watch for without inventing the next chapter

The strongest questions are about the work that actually exists: how the fictional school and discarded ideas fit together, how the voices serve the characters, and how Tsai’s visual world interacts with the older recording. Those are questions viewers can assess from the complete film, rather than from a brief excerpt or the list of famous contributors alone.

Any later report about new My Chemical Romance music, another Tsai project or an expanded distribution plan will need its own confirmation. For now, the official upload, the named creative credits and the documented anniversary and concert context provide a clear starting point. A short that can be watched today is a complete cultural development in its own right, without treating every artistic collaboration as a coded promise of a different product.