John Carney says Nick Jonas came into Power Ballad with a rare kind of restraint. The filmmaker says Jonas co-wrote only one song for the soundtrack, “Spectacular,” and never tried to muscle his way deeper into the writing room.
Carney discussed the film on June 5 as he pushed for its theatrical expansion, and the timing puts Jonas back in the spotlight for a project built around music as much as story. In Power Ballad, Paul Rudd plays Rick Power, a wedding band frontman, while Jonas plays Danny Wilson, a former boy bander who steals one of Rick’s songs and turns it into a hit without giving credit.
What Carney found notable was how little Jonas asked for. He said the singer told him, “If you need me to get involved [in the songwriting], let me know,” and was never the type to say he wanted “a piece of this or a part of that.” Carney said he was “actually quite grateful” for that approach, because it fit the way he likes to work on music-driven films.
That mattered to Carney because he said he often feels some collaborators are around on the off chance that a song might really work, especially when a project comes from the filmmaker behind Once, the 2007 Oscar-winning film that made his name as a director who can turn songs into story. He suggested the shadow of that success can pull people toward the songwriting process, even if they are not trying to take over it. Jonas, Carney said, did not behave that way.
Spectacular appears only in fragments at a couple of points in the film, which makes Jonas’ limited role even more striking. Carney’s own music-film track record runs through Begin Again in 2013, Sing Street in 2016 and Flora and Son in 2023, and he said he still has to fight to raise money for films that do not have a musical vibe. That backdrop helps explain why a small, cooperative contribution from a star like Jonas registered as a win.
The friction is that Carney’s gratitude also hints at a broader reality in this corner of Hollywood: a music film can draw people who want the cachet of a song that might land, even if they do not want to shape it. He said that if he and Jonas work together again, he would invite him to co-create a soundtrack from scratch. For now, though, the story is simpler than the kind of ego fight Power Ballad plays with on screen: Jonas showed up, added one song, and left the rest to the film.
