Seven years after the untimely death of original singer Chester Bennington and a quarter-century after kicking off a 100-million album career, Linkin Park boldly elected to carry on with a new vocalist, Emily Armstrong, in 2024. Now, the band is making the commensurately brave decision to release a documentary chronicling the process.
Linkin Park DJ and turntablist Joe Hahn, who already directed several of the band’s biggest music videos for “Breaking the Habit,” “Numb,” and “What I’ve Done,” helmed Unshatter, which was first conceived as a concert film.
“This wasn’t supposed to be a documentary. It started with an opportunity to film our 2024 show in São Paulo, just wanting to capture that moment,” Hahn said in a statement. “But the more we kept the cameras rolling, the more we realized there was a much bigger story unfolding. After seven years away, we honestly didn’t know what the future of Linkin Park looked like. We were figuring it out as we went. None of us knew if the band would evolve the way it did, how fans would respond, or where any of it was leading. I didn’t want to make a film that looked back on everything with perfect clarity. I wanted people to experience that uncertainty the same way we did in real time.”
Spanning the first post-Bennington studio sessions in 2022, the subsequent release of 2024’s From Zero, and the aforementioned show in São Paulo, Brazil that drew a sold-out crowd of over 70,000 people in 2025, Unshatter weaves together rare unreleased footage, performacnes and candid interviews with both band members and fans that punctuate Linkin Park’s revival. A few quotes are included in the new trailer, as bassist Dave Farrell recounts the desire to continue after Bennington’s death: “If it’s going to only be one other chapter, it doesn’t get to end where it currently had ended.”
Meanwhile, guitarist Brad Delson discusses the thought process in selecting a frontperson. “The idea of trying to find people who could sing in a certain style felt kind of disingenuous. It’s a one in a million it could be that other person.” Another soundbite offers Armstrong’s perspective from a place of extremely high pressure: “Are you able to fill these shoes? Are you able to be this person?”
“Coming back was a huge leap of faith,” Hahn added. “We decided that if we were going to do it, we wanted to go all in because we wanted it to feel meaningful for the fans who had stayed with us through everything. Making this film also reminded us how much our songs mean to people. They’ve always lived somewhere between darkness and hope, and seeing how they’ve continued to help people over the years became one of the biggest reasons to tell this story.”
The film, which is slated for a limited theatrical release beginning September 30, is accompanied by an official soundtrack of songs from Linkin Park’s entire career, as well as exclusive recordings not featured in the film. Watch the Unshatter trailer below.