It’s Michael Flop-ly!
He plunged €3m into his directorial debut passion project, only for his movie Blackbird to be 2022’s 74th most successful release meaning:
MICHAEL FLATLEY’S much-mocked feature film Blackbird has been one of the cinema flops of the year, costing more than 20 times what it earned and taking less than €115,000 in the Irish box office.
In what has otherwise been a generally good year for Irish film – beginning with the Oscar-winning Belfast and ending with the Oscar-tipped Banshees of Inisherin – Flatley’s critically panned spy/action flick failed to pull in the punters.
The former Riverdance superhoofer wrote, directed and starred in Blackbird – and financed it himself up to €3m, according to reports. But figures provided to the Irish Mail on Sunday by media analytics firm Comscore confirm Blackbird is only the 74th most-popular film in Irish cinemas so far this year, taking just €113,689 in the Republic and the North combined.
And it did even worse in Britain, where it took just €22,698.
Given that the film only got a theatrical release on these islands, that leaves the 64-year-old looking at a loss of around €2.85m.
Ahead of its release in early September, Blackbird’s bombastic trailer generated enough coverage and online amusement to leave some assuming it could turn into an unlikely, ‘so bad it’s good’ cult hit with cinema goers. But a disappointingly small number of people ended up sitting through the 90 minutes and Blackbird, which Flatley insisted was not a vanity project, was pulled from most cinemas in its third week.
To put its takings into context, the year’s most popular cinema release, Top Gun: Maverick, made 79 times more than Blackbird did on the island of Ireland, taking in almost €9m (though Flatley can’t have expected to rival Tom Cruise at the box office). And the film was comfortably outperformed by the likes of Fall, a similarly budgeted survival thriller about two women who get stuck up a 2,000ft tall radio tower, starring Grace Caroline Currey and Virginia Gardner.
Even Catherine Tate’s The Nan Movie did better than Blackbird – despite its comparative lack of promotion and even worse reviews.
Although likely to be overtaken by Martin McDonagh’s Banshees Of Inisherin, which only came out three weeks ago, the highest-grossing Irish film so far this year (in Irish cinemas) is Belfast, in ninth place with a taking of €3,798,495.
Directed by Kenneth Branagh, who bagged an Oscar for his screenplay, its stellar cast included Caitríona Balfe, Judi Dench, Jamie Dornan and Ciarán Hinds.
Not that Blackbird’s cast was without talent – Flatley managed to convince the Oscar -nominated Eric Roberts (Runaway Train), Patrick Bergin (Sleeping With The Enemy) and Ian Beattie (Game Of Thrones) to come on board, presumably lending some valuable film-set experience to the first-time director/ leading man. It also starred Nicole Evans and Belfast actress Mary Louise Kelly.
But the film was dogged by what one reviewer called ‘significant issues in the storytelling, dialogue, acting, photography, pacing, scoring, editing, staging, lighting and directing departments’. It has a score of 3.2 out of 10 on film database website, imdb.com.
One cinema manager insisted that, while its box office performance was poor, Blackbird could be considered ‘a bit of a victory’ for Flatley. ‘I guess nobody actually expected it to get as far as it did, so it’s a bit of a victory for him, in a way. You’ve got to commend someone for going through with their dreams,’ he said.
Flatley told Ryan Tubridy on RTÉ’s Late Late Show in September that, during his touring days, his ‘dear old Irish mother would call every Sunday and say, “Give up that old dancing now and go off and make a few movies”.’