Blackbird

It's won awards and praise from 'all kinds of audiences'. So why is the Lord of the Dance star's budget Bond-alike only now taking flight?

But it’s unlikely that No Time To Die – or perhaps any of the 007 series – will have shaken and stirred audiences quite as much as Blackbird is likely to when, finally, it spreads its wings and soars into cinemas in September. We are in for a treat; the only question at hand is what kind of one it will be. He said of the film’s apparent cheapness that "the reason I did it this way was because, in my shows over all these years, I'm used to directing it, producing it, starring in it and sweeping up the place… Should Blackbird be an unlikely hit, we can expect a sequel, too, which Flatley has already suggested will "surprise people". But before then, he’s expressed his delight that the film is finally being released. Controversy aside, Flatley professed himself deeply proud of the finished product at the time of its completion: "I prefer to think of it being timeless, rather than old fashioned, but it's romantic, with no bad language, sex or explicit violence - people like those sort of films, and feel they've missed out on seeing them, so there's a big audience for it. He did not want his debut film to be anything to do with Lord of the Dance, and so decided that he would instead tailor his picture to a rather different viewer: his mother. that's kind of what I did on this film…I was my own cheapest labour to do as much of it as I could". As for the poster: "I had nothing to do with that….as soon as we realised the mistake for the young lady Nicole Evans we immediately put her name on the poster. The original marketing attracted criticism for juxtaposing middle-aged male actors with younger women in bikinis on the poster, in what seemed like a tone-deaf throwback to the casual misogyny that this genre of film demonstrated in the Eighties. So it won't be on my dime at the end of the day." It is entirely possible that the distributors may have a smash hit on their hands, although they may be better off selling it as an inadvertent Producers-esque comedy than the gritty thriller Flatley apparently believes he has created. Flatley appears to have summoned up every conceivable cliché for his directorial debut, in which he has cast himself as Victor Blackley, a once-deadly contract killer known as, surprisingly enough, Blackbird who has – as is always the way of these things – turned his back on violence. But not a frame has been seen of the secretive-looking project, which was completed in 2018 but has been kept away from the increasingly desperate public. The trailer concludes with a tuxedoed Blackley covered in blood and announcing "Bless me father, for I have sinned, and am about to sin again". The Blackbird has clearly sung again.