It’s been a vintage year for movies, with so many big releases that it’s been impossible to catch everything you wanted.
In theaters, Top Gun: Maverick roared across the screens and blew everyone away, while Thor: Love and Thunder, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and The Batman proved that superheroes remain just as important in the box. -office as they apparently always have been. .
Netflix has had great success with The Adam Project, Senior Year and new blockbuster The Gray Man, while specialist streamers like Shudder and Mubi have also released a host of critically acclaimed films.
Unfortunately, it was also a vintage year of a different kind, with plenty of bad movies hitting screens as well.
There are loads of awful movies every year, but 2022 looks exceptional, especially for titles that earn the ultimate badge of dishonor: earning a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. We rounded up five such films in May, with the terrible Lena Headey-powered thriller 9 Bullets and the mournful pair of erotic thrillers 365 Days.
But, could these cinematic disasters be spoofed as the worst films of 2022? There’s a new contestant, and he’s got such a weird backstory that he’ll almost certainly be more interesting than the movie itself…
Don’t say vanity project…
Do you remember Michael Flatley? During the 1990s, he was, for a time, extremely famous.
A renowned Irish dancer, he was invited by the President of the Republic of Ireland, Mary Robinson, to help create an intermission show for the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest. Flatley presented a performance of seven-minute titled Riverdance for the contest’s interval act, which went so well that Flatley pushed to turn the show into a full production.
Riverdance was obscenely successful, grossing over $1 billion during its run. Flatley didn’t last long at Riverdance; he fell out with producers over royalties and left to form his own show, Lord Of The Dance. That career, which at one point saw Flatley insure his legs for $57.6 million, earned him a fortune of over $250 million.
Now retired from dancing, Flatley has all that money burning a hole in his pocket and he’s decided to become a filmmaker. The first product of this new career is Blackbird (not to be confused with the excellent new drama from Apple TV Plus) and you can see the trailer below:
Not only does Flatley star in Blackbird, but he’s also the director, producer, and writer, and as you’d expect, he put in most of the money.
Flatley plays Victor Blackley, an Irish-American dancer who also happens to be a former MI6 agent. Now that he’s retired, he owns a nightclub and a hotel in Barbados, but his world is thrown into chaos when an old flame returns…
To help make this movie, Flatley enlisted a few people who have acted before. Eric Roberts, who has already been nominated for an Oscar for his role in Runaway Train, plays the wonderfully named Blake Molineux. Now, we’re not saying Roberts isn’t picky, but he did 19 movies in 2018 and 29 movies in 2017, so his prep methods probably aren’t up to par with Daniel Day-Lewis.
Ian Beattie, who is a Game Of Thrones veteran, is also in the cast, as is Patrick Bergin, last seen on British soap opera Eastenders.
The film, if the trailer is to be believed, is something of a Dollar Tree James Bond retread, with dialogue and visual effects so cheap they could have been produced on PowerPoint.
Still, bad slocky action movies cost 10 percent, but what makes Blackbird special is that, for a long time, it seemed like Flatley and his team were actively trying to make sure no one ever saw him.
Blackbird singing in the heart of the night…
Blackbird is not a new movie. It was finished and started screening in 2018. It actually premiered at London’s Raindance Film Festival in September 2018, but, in a bizarre move for a festival where indie films are supposed to build hype, all critics were excluded from the screening. .
There were no quotes, no screening reactions, nothing. After this screening, everything became silent. Irish journalist Brian Lloyd actually campaigned to see the film, and nobody let him.
He wasn’t the only one either.
Four years after being banned from attending the world premiere of Michael Flatley’s debut film BLACKBIRD, making it a film I was desperately looking for more than anything else, I can finally write about its release. It’s a beautiful day. https://t.co/c7bflQ69wiJuly 14, 2022
Now though, according to The Hollywood Reporter, it’s coming to cinemas, at least in the UK and Ireland. It hits theaters on September 2, and on top of that, Flatley has recruited singer Sinead O’Connor to sing a song over the closing credits.
When the Irish release was announced, Flatley blamed Covid-19 for the delays, writing in a statement that “…the pandemic has caused many unprecedented production delays, but we are finally there. We have all invested heavily in this project, and for me it’s very personal.” Sadly, there’s no US release date yet, but Flatley still has a big fanbase from its dance days, so you’re guessing it’s going to happen somewhere.
Will critics be able to see it this time? And will it get a Rotten Tomatoes score above a flat zero? I can’t wait to find out.
