“Power Ballad”: Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas Trade Powerful Punches Over… Songwriting?
In “Power Ballad” there’s a very specific kind of betrayal that hits harder than most. Not the dramatic, screaming-in-the-rain kind. The quiet kind – where someone takes something you made, puts their own name on it, and becomes famous off your back. That’s the emotional gut punch at the center of John Carney’s new music comedy, and – guess what? The trailer already has us picking sides.
Powerful “Power Ballad” Preview
Lionsgate dropped the first trailer for “Power Ballad” on March 11, just ahead of its SXSW premiere. The film opens wide in US theaters on June 5, with a UK and an Ireland release on May 29. It already had its world premiere as the Closing Night Gala at the Dublin International Film Festival on March 1 and it’s been quietly generating buzz for weeks.
What is “Power Ballad” About?
Paul Rudd plays Rick, a wedding singer who peaked somewhere around a decade ago and has made an uncomfortable peace with that fact. Nick Jonas plays Danny, a former boy band member whose solo career is treading water. The two of them meet at a wedding gig, end up in a late-night jam session, and create something amazingly good together.
Then Danny takes that song, releases it as his own, and watches his career catch fire all over again. Rick watches from the outside. That’s the film. It’s a simple premise – loaded with emotional landmines.
Why Paul Rudd Was the Right Call Here
Rudd is one of the most underrated dramatic comedic actors working right now, which shouldn’t still be a surprise but somehow still is. Rick isn’t just a guy who got his song stolen – he’s a guy who was right, who knew he was good, and who watched the world confirm it while handing the credit to someone else. That’s not just embarrassing – that’s a specific kind of deep wound.
Rudd’s Broadway background – which includes “Three Days of Rain” opposite Julia Roberts and Bradley Cooper, and “Grace” alongside Michael Shannon – gives him the theatrical grounding to sell this without going broad. He doesn’t need to oversell Rick’s pain. You just feel it, which is more uncomfortable to watch. That means it’s working.
Nick Jonas Isn’t Just Playing a Character in This
Let’s not pretend there isn’t a meta layer to Jonas playing a former boy band member whose solo career needs rescuing. The Jonas Brothers reunion happened. The solo stuff has been… fine. Danny’s arc, a performer whose entire identity is tied to a polished public persona, is territory Jonas definitely knows from the inside.
He made his stage debut at eight years old in “A Christmas Carol” at Madison Square Garden. He’s done Broadway multiple times, most recently opposite Tony winner Adrienne Warren in “The Last Five Years” in 2025. He knows how to carry a role that requires real vulnerability, and from the trailer, he’s leaning into Danny’s uglier qualities without trying to make him likable. That’s the right instinct.
John Carney is Doing Something Different This Time
If you know Carney’s work, then you know his films are generally about what music unlocks in people. Usually it’s connection, escape, second chances. “Power Ballad” takes that same framework and asks a much harder question: what does music unlock when the people involved in it stop trusting each other?
That’s a real shift for Carney, and it gives “Power Ballad” a sharper edge than anything he’s centered a film on before. The man knows how to make creative collapse feel very real rather than anything melodramatic.
Carney co-wrote the screenplay with Peter McDonald, and the music was handled by Gary Clark, his longtime collaborator who co-wrote the songs for “Sing Street” and “Flora and Son.” The songs in the trailer are brief, but they stick. That matters for a Carney film more than almost any other filmmaker working today. “Once” won the Oscar for Best Original Song, and “Begin Again” earned a nomination for “Lost Stars.” The music has to hold up – and it does.
What the “Power Ballad” Trailer Gets Right
The contrast in the trailer is doing a lot of work. The warmth of the jam session footage – the easy, late-night energy of two people who truly connect through music – lands. Then the cold reality of what follows lands even harder. That emotional whiplash is exactly what the film needs to sell its premise, and it’s done cleanly, without over-explaining anything.
In the trailer, the line that sticks comes from Jonas: “Do you think it is easy to turn a song into a hit?” It’s defensive and self-justifying, but maybe not completely wrong. That ambiguity is what will make “Power Ballad” work if the rest of the film delivers. It’s not merely about a stolen song. It’s about who owns something when the collaboration breaks down – and whether being right is worth anything when you’re still the one losing.
The rest of the cast includes Jack Reynor, Havana Rose Liu, and Marcella Plunkett. Lionsgate is positioning this as a summer release with real legs, betting on the Rudd-Jonas combination and Carney’s track record to carve out space in a season usually dominated by big franchises and sequels. It’s a fair bet. “Power Ballad” looks like exactly the kind of film that finds an audience who didn’t know they were waiting for it.
