If you’re a fan of Michael Keaton, long single shots, and Edward Norton making fun of himself, you’re in luck, as Birdman will be released on HBO Max on Feb. 1.
The Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu film tells the story of Riggan Thompson (Keaton), a faded Hollywood actor mostly known for playing the superhero Birdman. The movie finds him trying to stage a comeback with a Broadway adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s short story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.
One of the most remembered things about Birdman, other than Keaton’s performance, was that it was shot with several long single shots sewn together seamlessly, so they gave the impression the whole movie was one long shot. Iñarritu said back then that “we live our lives with no editing” and wanted to create the effect that everything in Birdman was happening in real-time.
Birdman was a box office success, earning $103 million worldwide on an $18 million budget. The film was a critics’ darling, earning nine Academy Awards nominations and winning four in total: Best Film, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Cinematography. Experts thought Keaton would win his first Oscar, but he lost to Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything.
Critics loved Birdman so much that the movie still has a 91% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 78% audience rating. The film was directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu and starred Michael Keaton (Batman), Zack Galifianakis (The Hangover), Edward Norton (Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery), Andrea Riseborough (Amsterdam), Naomi Watts (Mulholland Drive), and Emma Stone (La La Land).