The only movie in cinema history personally approved by Kate Bush and Steven Seagal: “I’m a massive fan”
It should go without saying that Kate Bush and Steven Seagal are two names that don’t come up in the same conversation very often, with absolutely nothing uniting them apart from the movie that required both to give their personal seal of approval.
The legendary singer and songwriter has had a huge influence on music and popular culture, and despite shying away from the limelight for decades and taking several lengthy sabbaticals from the recording studio, she’s never gone out of fashion, something that can’t be said about Seagal.
He’s cut from a very different cloth, with the actor and teller of tall tales building his persona around a series of anecdotes that have either been called out as blatantly untrue or can’t be verified, all while proving himself to be a magnanimous dickhead that barely anyone has a nice word to say about.
Unlike Bush, whose music continues to influence and inspire to this day, Seagal had peaked by the early 1990s, and even that might be generous. What sort of motion picture would need to get the nod from two such disparate folks in order to be made the way its writer and director had intended? M3GAN 2.0, obviously.
Gerard Johnstone’s opening instalment was a smash hit in 2022, with the sci-fi horror comedy recouping its budget 15 times over at the box office and turning its title character into a viral sensation. A sequel was inevitable by the end of its first weekend in cinemas, only for the follow-up to fall embarrassingly flat.
Half as entertaining as its predecessor at a push, 2.0 made almost $150 million less in ticket sales, revealing M3GAN as a one-trick pony. However, because Violet McGraw’s Cady was scripted as a Seagal devotee, and Bush’s ‘This Woman’s Work’ had been written into the screenplay, Johnstone needed to reach out to both.
“We did have to get Steven’s permission,” he told Forbes. “I don’t know if we sent him the script, but we absolutely did have to get permission, and he was gracious enough to give it to us.” If it paid, Seagal was always likely to say yes, especially when those high-profile movie offers hadn’t been rolling in for decades.
As for Bush, “it took a little bit of convincing.” She doesn’t hand over the rights to her music on a whim, which meant Johnstone, a “massive fan,” had to show her the scene featuring the track, which gained her blessing. “Kate didn’t take any money for it either,” he added. “We gave her all we could afford, and she gave it to charity. That made me an even bigger fan.”
Hollywood can be an unusual place at the best of times, but an entirely forgettable sequel is the only movie in cinema history that needed both Steven Seagal and Kate Bush to sign off on being included has to be one of the strangest behind-the-scenes stories to come along in a while, even if M3GAN 2.0 wasn’t up to much.
