Matt George released a collection of surf stories, In Deep, in 2023.
After the cancellation of Fox’s Rescue Hi-Surf series, the surf content landscape is thirsty for something to fill the void. Blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge and former pro surfer and surf writer Matt George have stepped up to fill the void.
According to the entertainment news publication Deadline, the film, Bali Hai, will shoot in the fourth quarter of 2026. It follows “two estranged brothers who travel to Bali for an international surf competition, confronting long-buried wounds while immersed in one of the world’s most iconic surf destinations.”
The film will be co-produced by DeLonge, George, and Stan Spry, a film industry mogul with more than 200 movies and series to his name.
“It happened organically,” George told us. “Stan Spry, my friend at Evoke Entertainment, just felt it was time for a badass surf movie again. He and Tom Delonge are surfers and they get it and Stan called me here in Bali out of the blue and said let’s get it on. So we got right to work on the script together. The right frequency was just there.”
It’s not George’s first try at a surf flick. He wrote the 1998 film In God’s Hands where two surfers travel from Madagascar to Bali to Hawaii in search of waves. George, formerly a contributor to SURFER and SURFING, and now The Inertia, has also published a book of his surf journalism titled In Deep: The Collected Surf Writings. George also runs the Bali-based publication, Surftime magazine.
DeLonge, best known as the co-lead singer and guitarist of the San Diego punk band Blink-182, has since expanded into producing film and television shows.
George, who calls Bali home, won’t be short on material to draw inspiration from. Between surf violence, village destruction, and overdevelopment, Bali has become a complicated landscape for the boom of surfing on the island.
“What’s so unique about this project is that we are throwing all the cliché’s out the window, starting with shooting it all in Bali,” George said. “This will not be an underdog Rocky story about riding the biggest wave or winning some contest against the odds. Bali is still the international crossroads of the surfing universe. And the melange of wild characters here, the perfection of the surf and Bali’s mystical culture is a perfect storm for a drama about surfing. Our characters, two brothers who don’t get along with each other, will be on a wild ride through it all. I reckon Quentin Tarantino is gonna love this film.”
