Nick Jonas' Danny sitting at a piano with Paul Rudd's Rick next to him holding a guitar in Power Ballad
John Carney is back with another moving mix of comedy and music with Power Ballad, and he assures it will continue a long-running tradition of his. Co-written and directed by the Sing Street filmmaker, the musical dramedy centers on Rick, a wedding singer who has a falling out with his band, while also struggling to come to terms with being past his prime.
During one of his band's final gigs, Rick meets Danny Wilson, a former boy band star whose popularity is fading, with the pair connecting over their former stardom and enjoying a late-night jam session together. However, when one of the songs Rick performed that night for him is turned by Danny into a record-setting sensation that also helps put the latter back on the map, the former feels a sense of betrayal and a drive to reclaim his recognition. This puts both on a dangerous path as they're forced to confront both the price of their ambitions and the harrowing world of the music industry. Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas lead the Power Ballad cast as Rick and Danny, respectively, while the rest of the roster includes The Penguin's Peter McDonald — who also co-wrote the film's script — frequent Carney collaborator Marcella Plunkett, Lurker's Havana Rose Liu, The Mummy's Jack Reynor and Mr. Malcolm's List's Sophie Vavasseur. Having first made its world premiere at 2026's Dublin International Film Festival followed by two SXSW showings, the film has garnered universal acclaim from critics, currently holding a rare perfect 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In honor of its latest festival showing, ScreenRant's Ash Crossan interviewed John Carney in our SXSW media suite to discuss Power Ballad. While looking back at his work on 2016's Sing Street and its award-winning soundtrack, the co-writer/director confirmed that his new film will continue his 19-year tradition of having an official soundtrack release with songs from his stars, this time being Rudd and Jonas. Carney went on to reveal that the Power Ballad soundtrack will be a two-sided vinyl release, with"a Paul Rudd side and a Nick Jonas side," each with"a picture of both of them" to denote said tracks. The reason for this design comes from the nature of the film, in which their characters are fighting for the rights to a song, when, in reality,"they're kind of two sides of the same coin": John Carney: They're both making this claim about this piece of art that gets created at the beginning of the film. We always said, myself and Peter McDonald, who wrote the film and is also in it, at the very beginning we were like, these two guys are kind of alike. They shouldn't be that different. So the album will complement that nicely, I think. Power Ballad Has A Timely Undercurrent To Its Sweet Story ScreenRant: Now, you're back with Power Ballad here at SXSW. Just tell me about what the idea of the film is and what it means to you. John Carney: The movie continues in my tradition of heartwarming, musically themed, not-too-heavy movies. But it goes a little bit deeper into the process of collaboration, and the idea of ownership and copyright, and who owns what and why, and how hard it is to define what that is. It attempts to sort of dive into that in a fun, personalized way that's specific to both of these characters who claim they wrote the same song. John Carney: There was no one specific thing. I feel like ideas for movies are like spokes of a bicycle wheel. They're going to ring in your head, and they're relevant, and then they pass relevancy, and they become quiet again. It just seemed that the public were kind of interested in, until then, really was more of an industry thing of"such and such is suing such and such over this." There were a couple of big cases, and it felt like people were ready and interested and kind of primed to hear a story about what this means, and what it feels like to be stolen from, or to claim that you're being stolen from. And what it feels like to want something so badly, that you can maybe fudge the moral lines a little bit, and maybe allow yourself to put your hand in the cookie jar a little bit deeper than you normally would. John Carney: Crazy, yeah. It's very hard to define. These are very legal terms that we come up with on planet Earth to pay our rent and look after our interests. But in the long run, we die and the songs, the poems, stay living, and nobody cares who wrote them in a sense. So it's very interesting. It's a very interesting question that I think the film deals with and the main character deals with, which is"I know I own part of this song, but I don't know if I'll ever get remuneration or credit for it. And I don't know if there's a bigger story that's going on here, which I'm part of, in which I have to sort of let go of my ownership." ScreenRant: I know people are going to get on me for even referencing it, but when Taylor Swift was buying her catalog back, I think people got really interested in all of the intricacies of music rights. John Carney: Yes, exactly. No, that was a big case. Then there was Ed Sheeran, and then there was the Marvin Gaye story. John Carney: There's a few that have been circling for years. It's interesting because you kind of get a good guy and a bad guy, and then you get the lawyers, and you get the agents. It's a very dramatic situation, not one that I would ever want to find myself in, but it kind of has good guys and bad guys and villains and all of that. Also, it has the innocence of — the original idea of writing a song is from a very innocent, very pure place. You speak to a lot of songwriters, and they're sitting in hotel bedrooms, or ideas come to them in the most innocuous of places. It's not like they're sitting down trying to write a hit or anything like that. So, something that starts off as a very sort of personal, private moment is then you're giving it away every night for free, in a sense. You have this song or this idea, and you sing it to somebody every night. It's kind of theirs then, but it's very hard to define what the rules of that are. ScreenRant: And you have Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas, and I assume Nick just had stories for days about things like this. John Carney: He's not that type of guy. He has it in his bones, so he doesn't need to tell it. He just knows what he's doing. And he's been doing this for longer than anybody that I know. He really is a child star. So he brought a lot of that unspoken, unsaid reality and experience to the role, which was valuable. ScreenRant: When you were looking at who you wanted to cast – I mean, it's like one of those pairings I wouldn't think of, and then see them together, and I'm like,"Oh my God, yeah, Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas. That's amazing." John Carney: Yeah, you wouldn't think it, but it does kind of weirdly work. Good directing is good casting, and unlikely teams and partnerships that you kind of go,"What?" In a way, it's a buddy movie, even though they're after each other's blood for a period of time. They do get along, and they're funny and charming together at the beginning of the film — so maybe we'll make a sequel. ScreenRant: That's brilliant. Oh my gosh. What is it about the intersection of music and film that speaks to you? John Carney: Probably being a person of a short attention span in school and teachers saying,"Carney, wake up." I do have a very short attention span, and I realized as a screenwriter, I would kind of get bored too quickly, and go and play the piano, or go and noodle at the guitar or something like that. I remember working with other writers who'd be like,"Will you stop doing that?" or"It's frustrating." Over the years, I've managed somehow to make that move into my living room from my laptop when I get tired, and I go to the piano. I've managed to sort of connect the two a little bit. And people seem to enjoy the few films that I've made, so I'll continue doing that until my license is revoked. ScreenRant: It's a superpower. I'll tell you what, I'm not a doctor, don't take this advice, but I have ADHD and my doctor was like,"I don't want to prescribe you anything, because your randomness is actually working for you." John Carney: I mean, not to get into a whole thing about that, but a lot of that terminology that you guys use very liberally in America, we're just getting used to using it here. So now, everybody has ADHD in Ireland. And you realize half the f---ing class in the 1970s had all of these different labels and issues, but it was kind of helpful not – it's nice to be correctly diagnosed, and it can be helpful, but it can be controlling as well, I think. I'm much more for you get 32 people in a classroom. There are 32 individuals there. It's very hard to corral all these molecules together. So I agree with you. I think I've managed to turn what probably would have been the negatives to my personality into something right now, which is great. I'm happy for that. ScreenRant: Since you're already bouncing around, I know we're in Power Ballad land, but how far do you look ahead? Are you already kind of cranking away? John Carney: I'm never too crazy to plan too far ahead, because I know that that's not within my control, but I do like to know that my kids will eat and get to go to school. And filmmaking is you should really probably have three or four pots on the board at the same time. Because one of them will fall off, and one of them will evaporate, and one of them will this. Hopefully, the more you have, the more likely odds you have making another movie. ScreenRant: What's the advice you would have for an aspiring filmmaker who wants to get started, but they get stuck? Is it just keep writing, keep trying it? What is your method? John Carney: Yeah. There's a certain — it's not grit. I don't want to turn it into necessarily a positive thing, or a heroic thing, but it's a weird kind of reluctance to give up. It's just knocking at the same door again, and it just doesn't open, and it doesn't open. You have to keep going, you just have to keep on going. But I mean, there are so many opportunities now to make interesting . Technology, which can be a bad thing, there are so many different ways of expressing creativity, and it doesn't have to be a 90-minute film anymore, or a three-and-a-half minute song. I think it must be exciting to be coming up now, and to kind of be bold about it and go,"Nothing has to be any allocated amount of time." That's not what the kids are interested in. I think that you have to admit now that people are consuming media in so many different ways. I think young, innovative creators will be ahead of that, and they'll know exactly what that is. I don't know what it is, and I certainly will be slow on the uptake. But I just hope people feel that they should use their phones and all these recording devices. And AI and all that stuff that kind of terrifies us, I'm not that scared of it for some reason. I think the kids will find ways to be creative. That's just in the nature of humans. John Carney: I would say Saturday Night Fever, because it really is a soundtrack that is embedded in the film. The two things are just connected. So it really is a proper soundtrack where each song has a memorable scene, it pushes the plot forward. There are so many different styles, even though it's within the disco umbrella, it's a wonderful soundtrack. 7/10 Power Ballad Like Follow Followed 15A Comedy Music Release Date May 29, 2026 Runtime 98 minutes Director John Carney Writers Peter McDonald, John Carney Producers Anthony Bregman, John Carney, Peter Cron, Rebecca O'Flanagan, Robert Walpole Cast Power Ballad follows Rick, a former wedding singer, and Danny, a fading boy-band star, as they connect over music. When Danny revives his career with one of Rick's songs, Rick embarks on a quest for recognition, risking personal repercussions in their intertwined journey.
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