The film's supporting cast includes Zach Galifianakis, Edward Norton, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan, Emma Stone, and Naomi Watts.

The film was shot in New York City during the spring of 2013 with a budget of $16.5 million, jointly financed by Fox Searchlight Pictures, Regency Enterprises, and Worldview Entertainment.

Grossing more than $103 million worldwide, the film received critical acclaim, with praise for its screenplay, direction, cinematography, and the performances of the cast (particularly Keaton, Norton, and Stone).

The first previews are disastrous: Mike breaks character over replacing his gin with water, attempts to rape Lesley during a sex scene, and complains that the prop gun does not look natural.

During the final preview, after seeing Mike and Sam kissing backstage, Riggan goes for a smoke and accidentally locks himself outside with his robe stuck in the fire escape door.

In his dressing room, a strangely calm Riggan confesses to his ex-wife, Sylvia, that several years ago, he attempted to drown himself in the ocean after she caught him having an affair.

Sam returns to an empty room and frantically runs to the open window, scanning the ground before slowly looking up into the sky and smiling at what she sees.

The original choice behind the film's genre, which was subsequently re-adapted to concentrate on Riggan's final emotional tailspin, came from the director wanting to see a change in his approach.

With Iñárritu in Los Angeles, Giacobone and Bo in Buenos Aires, and Dinelaris in New York, the script was mainly written through Skype calls and emails.

The script that Iñárritu gave her and the rest of the cast came with the photo Man on Wire, which featured Philippe Petit crossing the Twin Towers on a tightrope.

When they joined production, Josh Brolin was set to play the role of Mike Shiner, but the financiers decided to switch him for Norton because of scheduling conflicts.

[28] After reading the script, Lubezki was worried that Iñárritu would offer him the job since Birdman "had all of the elements of a movie that I did not want to do at all" – comedy, studio work and long takes – but changed his mind after further discussion with the director.

You knew that every scene was staying in the movie, and like theater, this was it, this was your chance to live this scene.Editors Douglas Crise and Stephen Mirrione were involved in the project by this stage.

When Iñárritu told Mirrione that he planned for Lubezki to record table readings and the rehearsals, he suggested they edit them immediately to discover what was and was not working early on.

[13] Once the logistics of the scenes were worked out and they had the timing down, the team headed to Kaufman Studios for more rehearsals, followed by principal photography based exclusively in New York during the spring of 2013.

"[39] Lubezki – who did all the handheld camerawork[28] – had chosen the Alexa M because the camera was very small and allowed him to get into tiny spaces and close to the actors,[29] sometimes filming two inches (5 cm) away from Keaton's face.

Emma Stone, in an interview with Jimmy Fallon, recalled how a six-minute take of the scene where Riggan first meets Mike was ruined after she walked around a corner too quickly.

[46] Andrea Riseborough, meanwhile, described the process as "wonderful", mentioning how it was possible to hear the filming of a sequence from far away before the camera arrived, and then "the magic happens with you, and then everything leaves you, and everything's silent".

[51] His reaction to writing a soundtrack using only drums was similar to Lubezki's thoughts of shooting the movie like a single shot: "It was a scary proposition because I had no point of reference of how to achieve this.

[48][55] During these sessions the director would first talk him through the scene, then while Sánchez was improvising guide him by raising his hand to indicate an event – such as a character opening a door – or by describing the rhythm with verbal sounds.

The previous day, Sánchez received a note from the award committee explaining the decision, quoting rule fifteen of the 87th Academy Award Rules, noting "the fact that the film also contains over a half an hour of non-original (mostly classical) music cues that are featured very prominently in numerous pivotal moments in the film made it difficult for the committee to accept your submission".

[36] For stitching, aside from the director, Crise also discussed strategies with Lubezki and Thompson, and techniques for gluing takes together included panning on walls and actors' bodies.

Later, on a greenstage in Montreal, using a technique he had developed on Gravity, Lubezki lit Keaton with LED panels featuring high-dynamic-range images of the surrounding New York footage.

As Pejkovici states: "Much like Fellini's 1960[sic] classic 8½, Iñárritu's Birdman is a very intimate film about an artist's malaise, yet is epic, innovative, and ambitious in approach.

Iñárritu captures the artist's battle between ambition, admiration, and celebrity with stunning scope and skill in the form of a one-take format, as his camera sweeps through the backstage corridors, across the stage, out on the busy NYC streets, and back again in breathtaking fashion.

[77] Brody said that the actors played in "the sort of modern naturalism, without eccentricity of gesture, excess of expression, or heightened and formalistic precision, that is the business-casual of contemporary cinema".

[3] The film earned $424,397 during its limited North America opening in four theatres in New York and Los Angeles on the weekend of October 17, 2014, a per-theater average of $106,099, making it the 18th all-time earner (eighth among live-action movies) and ranking No.

The website's critical consensus reads: "A thrilling leap forward for director Alejandro González Iñárritu, Birdman is an ambitious technical showcase powered by a layered story and outstanding performances from Michael Keaton and Edward Norton.

[93][94] In The New York Times, Manohla Dargis compared the main character to Icarus,[95] the Greek mythological figure who crashed to his death after flying too close to the sun.

"[96] Ollie Cochran called the film "an amalgam of technical prowess, hypnotising visuals and pragmatically perceptive dialogue", believing it to be "a thought-provoking, energetic perspective of a fading actor looking to revitalise his career.