Conor Oberst is getting ready to release his new solo album Upside Down Mountain, his first collection of new songs since the 2011 Bright Eyes LP The People’s Key. (We’ve posted the new songs “Hundreds Of Ways” and “Governor’s Ball.”) That three-year leave of absence is a long one for the usually-prolific Oberst, and in a new Billboard feature, he explains that one reason he’s been gone for so long is that he was writing a screenplay. The movie, in Oberst’s mind, was to be a sci-fi movie that would star the members of his Monsters Of Folk supergroup, which also includes Jim James, M. Ward, and producer Mike Mogis. Here’s how Billboard describes the plot: “Our heroes save a dystopic society from pernicious devices called ‘Everything Machines,’ which adhere to a user’s face and provide an endless stream of pleasure-inducing stimuli.” The movie would’ve explored Oberst’s discomfort with the internet, but he now says that the prospective movie will “probably never go anywhere.”

In the meantime, Upside Down Mountain is out 5/20 on Nonesuch.