Why John Carney struggled to finance ‘Power Ballad’ until Paul Rudd joined

“I’m always looking for stories in the music world that aren’t just boy meets girl and they put on a show and it’s nice. That’s great, but it’s also very limited,” reveals Irish musician-turned-filmmaker John Carney, whose Power Ballad received its world premiere as the closing night film of the Dublin International Festival on March 1.

“I always have my eyes open for a story that’s a musical but has something more going for it.”

One morning in 2015, Carney was in a Dublin café when he spotted a man exiting a small, terraced house with his young daughter on their way to school. “He looked bedraggled and stressed in the way parents always do. But he looked so interesting. He had a ponytail, skinny jeans, boots and a little twang of an ageing rock guy about him.”

Carney was fascinated. “He was also laughing with his daughter, and I thought, that’s my next film right there. The guitar over the shoulder clinched it for me, because I know that guy. He’s funny, he’s tragic, he is a family man, but he’s also trying to be a rock star.”

At the same time, there were several high-profile music copyright and song ownership lawsuits going through the courts and so Carney dovetailed the two ideas, bringing them to his friend, actor Peter McDonald — “He’s a musician, I’m a musician; music is something we gave up to do something else, but we still carry music with us” — to collaborate on the screenplay which would eventually become Power Ballad.

But despite Carney’s track record of successful music-based features — including 2007’s Once, which won the Oscar for best original song as well as a Sundance audience award, Sing Street, and Begin Again— the film was a struggle to get financed. Until Marvel star Paul Rudd signed on. Rudd plays a wedding singer whose interaction with a rock star (Nick Jonas) causes a copyright drama over a song they co-create one drunken evening following an Irish wedding.

“It’s increasingly hard for somebody like me to get movies made because they’re original stories,” Carney reflects. “There’s no IP or remake or I’m not telling anybody else’s story. I couldn’t get the film made without a mighty star attached. Once Paul came on board, the whole domino thing happened. He was such a straight-up person. He was, ‘I’m in your movie. Go and get the money. I’ll see you on set.’ Which is what everybody needs and dreams of.”

The circa $10m film is produced by the US’ Likely Story’s Anthony Bregman and Peter Cron alongside Robert Walpole and Rebecca O’Flanagan of Dublin-based Treasure Entertainment, who previously worked together on Carney’s 2023 feature Flora And Son, and Carney himself. Financing came from 30 West and Screen Ireland, with WME Independent handling international rights.

Lionsgate boarded the project coming out of Cannes 2024, taking rights for North America and UK-Ireland. The production shot for eight weeks that summer on location in Dublin, where Jack Reynor and Havana Rose Liu joined Rudd and Jonas.

“Paul sings really well in the movie. And Nick acts really well,” says Carney, who co-wrote the song that causes the trouble between their characters with Scottish musician, songwriter and producer Gary Clark, former frontman of Danny Wilson. “All the memorable, good bits you’ll be singing afterwards, Gary wrote.”

With Power Ballard due to be released in the UK and Ireland by Lionsgate on May 29 and a week later in the US, Carney is turning his attentions to other projects. “I’ve got four things on my laptop that I’m dipping in and out of until one of them gets a bit of heat. I’m working on a TV show with A24, so that might go. I have no idea what will happen next.”

He pauses, swinging the camera on his phone round to show Screen his home office, which contains numerous musical instruments.

“I’m ambivalent about movies. Firstly, I have two small kids, and movies aren’t as important to me as they were when I was 25 or whatever. It’s a job. I enjoy it, it can pay well, and it’s satisfying to make something. But I’m more interested in reading a book now, if I’m honest. Or sitting back playing the guitar. I’m not too worried about it because I’m kind of independent, and I’ll make stuff anyway. I’d do it on my phone if I couldn’t raise the money.”

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