Scissor Sisters frontman Jake Shears has joined the film *Tinderbox* as a producer, lending his profile to a long-overlooked chapter of LGBTQ history. The film dramatises the 1973 Up Stairs Lounge fire in New Orleans, which remained the deadliest mass killing of LGBTQ people in the United States until the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016. The project draws on Robert Fieseler's 2018 book of the same name, and Shears' involvement helps push a story that has attracted Hollywood interest for years towards production.

The film will be written and directed by Colby Holt and Sam Probst, who previously made the indie horror *Ganymede*. The pair said they were listening to Shears' albums *Jake Shears* and *B-Sides* while reading the book and felt his songs connected to its characters and scenes, noting that both Shears and Fieseler are New Orleanians. Shears will also contribute music from those two albums. Cory Thompson, known for the 2024 thriller *Barron's Cove*, is producing through his Rewind Artists company.