Song Sung Blue had its premiere at the AFI Film Festival on October 26, 2025, and was released in the United States by Focus Features on December 25. The film received positive reviews from critics. Hudson was nominated for the Golden Globe Award and Actor Award for Best Lead Actress for her performance in the film.
Plot
Mike Sardina is a Don Ho impersonator, appearing at the Wisconsin State Fair. When Mike refuses to come on stage as anyone other than himself, he quits, right as Claire readies to come on as Patsy Cline. They have a conversation where she suggests he go down "the Neil Diamond route." Mike watches her sing and is smitten. He heads home and puts on a Neil Diamond vinyl to practice with. They later begin a relationship.
After a bad first gig as the newly formed, "Lightning and Thunder", a Neil Diamond tribute duo, Mike and Claire get married and have a string of successful shows. One day, Claire is hit by a car while planting flowers in the garden in front of their house and loses her left leg below the knee. She struggles with depression, pain and addiction to pain medications, and begins fighting with Mike, thinking that he is seeing other people. One evening, Mike's daughter, Angelina, asks if he has been attending his AA meetings. After a bit more prodding, Mike admits that singing does not mean anything when Claire is not there to sing with him. Angelina insists he needs to attend AA meetings, and he agrees. After having a dream that causes her to leave the house, the family decides to get Claire psychiatric help, admitting her to a hospital.
Mike begins looking for jobs again, while his stepdaughter, Rachel, admits that she is four months pregnant and wants to give the baby to a couple who are having trouble conceiving, but no one has noticed. Mike takes a moment and asks who she needs to help her, with Rachel admitting she needs her mom. Claire begins walking again, rehabilitates in mind and body, and manages to come home in time for Christmas, reconciling with Mike.
She pushes for "Lightning and Thunder" to go gigging again, recapturing their popularity. She helps Rachel through the remainder of the pregnancy, giving the child to the happy couple. Claire and Mike also walk to help Claire strengthen her muscles with her prosthetic. Eventually, the Ritz in Milwaukee invites them to be a headliner on the same night Neil Diamond is playing his sold-out show nearby, allowing fans of Neil Diamond to enjoy his music in another way. Mike and Claire agree to the gig, later learning that Diamond wants to meet them in person, and that their show is also sold out.
Preparing for the gig, Mike experiences another heart attack, and, collapsing, hits his head on the sink before hitting the floor. Mike and Claire wish each other good luck, and Mike tells Claire that none of this is possible without her, and that she is his everything. The concert is a massive success, but Mike dies later that night, and Claire sings at his funeral.
Some time later, Claire's son, Dayna, plays a recording of Mike singing "Song Sung Blue", while Claire plants more flowers in the garden at the site where she was struck by the car.
To promote the film, from October 3–4, 2025, Jackman and Hudson performed songs from the film live in a special concert presentation at Radio City Music Hall.[12]Song Sung Blue had its world premiere at the AFI Film Festival on October 26, 2025.[13] The film also screened at the Savannah Film Festival on October 30, 2025.[14]
Jackman and filmmaker Craig Brewer traveled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in December 2025 to further promote the film. Kopp's Frozen Custard released a flavor called "Song Sung Blueberry," in celebration of the film, that Jackman served at their Greenfield location on December 2, 2025. Jackman and Brewer later attended a showing at the Oriental Theatre in Milwaukee.[15]
Home media
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Box office
The film was released theatrically in the United States on December 25, 2025 by Focus Features.[13] In the United States and Canada, Song Sung Blue was released alongside Marty Supreme and Anaconda, and was projected to gross $10–14 million from 2,578 theaters over its four-day opening weekend.[2] It ended up debuting to $7.6 million (and a total of $12 million over the four days), finishing in eighth.[16]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 77% of 188 critics' reviews are positive.The website's consensus reads: "Bringing a sweet amount of dignity to the art of imitation, Song Sung Blue mostly avoids becoming a mere cover of the documentary on which it's based thanks to Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson's heartfelt performances."[18]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 61 out of 100, based on 45 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[19] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.[20]
Critical response
Amy Nicholson of the Los Angeles Times wrote: "You won’t see a movie with better music and worse dialogue this holiday season than the bizarrely charming Song Sung Blue, a biopic about a husband-and-wife Neil Diamond cover band who were a fleeting sensation in 1990s Milwaukee."[21] Caroline Siede of The A.V. Club wrote: "Based on the 2008 documentary by Greg Kohs, Sung Song Blue could have turned Mike and Claire into Christopher Guestian figures of comedy. Instead, it finds dignity within the bedazzled costumes, makeshift wind machines, and Thai restaurant performances that aid their increasingly popular novelty act."[22]
Brian Truitt of USA Today wrote: "Can a major Hollywood star have another breakthrough role later in life? Because that’s what it feels like watching Kate Hudson as a talented Midwestern pop-rock singer in Song Sung Blue.[23]Ann Hornaday and Michael O'Sullivan of The Washington Post wrote: "You’d be forgiven for thinking Song Sung Blue is a Neil Diamond biopic. Hollywood can’t seem to stop trying to immortalize famous performers by churning out heavy-handed reenactments of their inspiring life stories. What’s another, really?"[24]
Laura Venning of Empire wrote: "If you’ve found most recent music biopics to be snoozefests severely lacking in good old-fashioned melodrama, we bring good news. That is, unless you’re allergic to sequins, luxuriant wigs and the musical stylings of Neil Diamond."[25]Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote: "Here is a startlingly strange, undeniably entertaining true-life story from the heartland of American showbusiness; a lovable crowdpleaser whose feelgood flavour won’t prepare you for the way the plot repeatedly and savagely twists like an unsafe fairground ride."[26]
Owen Gleiberman of Variety wrote: "'Song Sung Blue' is certainly a movie for the bom bom bom crowd. Mostly, though, it’s for the Neil Diamond fans who will listen to Mike and Claire, in their solo show at the Ritz Theater in Milwaukee, in a state of slow-burn bliss. When Mike starts to sing the Arabic chant of Soolaimon, Diamond’s single from 1970, it sounds eerie and mysterious, but when the groove kicks in it’s so ecstatic you want to revel in its majesty, the same way Mike does: as a Diamond shining through the darkness."[27] David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter wrote " I’ll confess I was an easy mark for this movie. A key childhood memory is sitting on my aunt’s living room floor — she was groovy enough to have a "feature wall" of contrast wallpaper — playing the Hot August Night double album from start to finish while everyone else was outside digesting barbecue."[28]
Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times wrote: "You are bound to be won over by "Song Sung Blue", a small-scaled, bighearted tale of a real-life Milwaukee duo who absorbed the hardest of life's knocks and refused to stay down."[29]Kyle Smith of The Wall Street Journal wrote: "Song Sung Blue won me over early on, when a bar fight breaks out over the remark shouted by a leather-clad biker dude: “Neil Diamond sucks.” Fighting words, bordering on heresy."[30]
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