My Chemical Romance have teamed up with visual artist Lauren Tsai for a new short film titled Prelude to The End, featuring voice contributions from Billie Eilish, Phoebe Bridgers, Hideo Kojima, and John C. McGinley. Watch it below.
Produced by Tsai’s independent studio UNREAL INC., it arrives in conjunction with the 20th anniversary celebrations of the band’s landmark album The Black Parade. The audio-video project fuses the imagery of her short film The Dying World with the opening track from the album, “The End.”
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Prelude to The End follows Astrid, a student at a peculiar New England boarding school who finds herself in a world of forgotten ideas after authority figures discard her cherished sketchbook. Tsai voices the lead herself, while Eilish plays her friend and Bridgers portrays her sister. Meanwhile, Kojima lends his voice to a teacher and McGinley plays the school’s imposing dean.
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For Tsai, the collaboration is something of a full-circle moment. Having grown up making animated fan videos for My Chemical Romance’s songs, she debuted The Dying World as a short film at the 2025 Annecy Film Festival and later went on to develop it into a multimedia project. Her other credits include directing the music video for boygenius’ “Cool About It.”
“It was an absolute dream to work on this project for The Black Parade and The Dying World,” she shared in a statement. “I deeply respect MCR and Gerard’s creative legacy. It has been an honor for him to find inspiration in a world that I’ve created, in the same way I have always admired the worlds that he has built throughout his career.”
Prelude to The End will also screen at the final two performances of the ongoing “The Black Parade Tour”’s US leg, scheduled to take place at the Hollywood Bowl on October 30th and 31st. The band will then continue the concert series in Asia, beginning November 7th in South Korea. Look for deals and tickets to sold-out shows here (you can save $20 on your first order of $200 or more with promo code COS20 at checkout).