Bob Dylan. Bruce Springsteen. Elton John. Queen. Whitney Houston. Robbie Williams. Bob Marley. Amy Winehouse. Elvis Presley.
What thread connects these legends across genres, decades and continents? Each has been immortalized on screen—and this isn’t even half the list! In the past decade, Hollywood has turned the music biopic into its own genre. The Beatles are getting four. Michael Jackson’s is in production. Martin Scorsese is circling The Grateful Dead. It’s as if every major artist now needs a movie to complete their legacy.
Of course, music biopics aren’t new. Hollywood has long been fascinated by real-life figures, and musician-centered films have always been part of its steady output. In fact, biopics are among the most enduring and popular subgenres in film history. Stories about real people hold a particular appeal that purely fictional ones often don’t. The success of Oppenheimer in 2023 confirmed audiences’ appetite for historical storytelling, and this year alone, dozens of biographical films are set to hit theaters—The Smashing Machine, Marty Supreme, Roofman. And yet, musician biopics seem to dominate the landscape. Why is that?
I can think of a few reasons. For one, Hollywood simply isn’t very…original anymore. Most of Disney and Pixar’s latest endeavors have either been live-action remakes of their classic films (see: How to Train Your Dragon, Snow White, The Little Mermaid) or unnecessary sequels/prequels (see: Moana 2, Mufasa: The Lion King, Inside Out 2), both of which practically print money at the box office. Outside of animation, remakes have been all the rage recently. If a popular movie from the pre-2000s exists, Hollywood has already been clamoring to give it a “reboot.” While these remakes can certainly be entertaining, they point to a looming issue in the film industry: executives just aren’t creative anymore. Or maybe they’re unwilling to take risks on original stories. In any case, banking on what’s worked before has been all the rage.
Music biopics fit into this conversation. They’re familiar, reliable, and generally do moderately well at the box office. Prior to the mid-2010s, music biopics were certainly a genre staple, but nowhere near as prevalent as they are today. 2005’s Walk the Line, focusing on the story of Johnny Cash and June Carter, overperformed at the box office and had quite the impressive Academy Awards sweep, signaling just how successful the formula could be. And then came the immediate parody film, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, which satirized the biopic genre so hard that for a while it seemed like it would never make a full comeback.
But alas, the genre was reignited in 2018 with the Queen-centered juggernaut Bohemian Rhapsody, which was a smash hit financially and critically—it pulled nearly $1 billion at the box office and earned four Oscars. Not too shabby for a film that critics don’t look at too fondly in hindsight.
It feels like Bohemian Rhapsody broke the dam for music biopics. You could practically see the dollar signs in the eyes of every Hollywood film executive. Suddenly, everyone got a music biopic—2019’s Rocketman chronicled the rise of Elton John, 2022’s Elvis showed a stylistic version of Elvis Presley’s life and death, and just last year, Timothée Chalamet helmed the Bob Dylan-centered A Complete Unknown. Jeremy Allen White’s starring vehicle as Bruce Springsteen in Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere just hit cinemas. The success of these films varies— and the quality does even more so—but the fact is that the biopic machine is churning with absolutely no indication of slowing down.
For the most part, audiences show up and show out for these films—but why? Nostalgia likely plays a huge factor. Music is deeply personal and chronicles our memories and emotions. It’s an easy pull to the theater for a two-hour film including your favorite songs by your favorite artists (take it from someone who saw Bohemian Rhapsody in theaters no less than six times, to my mother’s chagrin). Biopics also create an illusion of intimacy with the musician, like a peek behind the curtain at how the icon became, well, iconic. It’s a no-brainer to keep spewing them out: a recognizable name, a built-in audience, and a soundtrack that sells itself.
But for all their perceived authenticity, most of these films couldn’t be further from it. When Bohemian Rhapsody came out, I became obsessed with the film and Queen. The Christmas after it came out, I received a massive Freddie Mercury biography and read it in a week—and discovered that virtually nothing that occurred on screen was based in reality. Seriously! Even miscellaneous details about Mercury and the band’s rise to fame were changed. The film may as well have been about a different group entirely for all its inaccuracies. In fact, once you learn the truth about the band, the movie becomes almost offensive in its portrayal of Freddie Mercury.
That’s the issue with these biopics: they just aren’t very good, and they’re almost entirely fundamentally dishonest. No one should go to the cinema expecting a history lesson, but at the very least, there should be a level of truth to the story you’re being told. And they all follow the same formulaic track: the humble beginnings, the meteoric rise, the drug abuse, the fall from grace, the comeback. It’s predictable to the point of parody. These films don’t tell a musician’s story but instead mythologize it, sanitizing the darker qualities. It’s worse when an artist’s estate has creative control over the film, able to scrub the negative qualities to create a marketable narrative. They’re PR products disguised as cinema.
It’s frustrating to have to deal with the massive slog of music biopics every award season. Because it’s not just about the box office—these films tend to clean up with award show nominations, which is even more incentive to keep pumping ‘em out, regardless of quality. Then, on top of the intolerability of the film itself, you have to deal with the press tour: months of an actor lamenting how hard they practiced, their voice lessons, learning instruments…give me a break. And Hollywood rewards this! Insert the influx of trophies and endless prestige.
The only music biopics worth their weight are the ones that break the mold. 2019’s Rocketman has become my gold standard for what these films should aspire to—formulaic, sure, but told as a genuine musical that captures Elton John’s spirit with its stylistic decisions as well as its subject matter. Rocketman feels like a labor of love compared to the other recent releases. The Robbie Williams monkey biopic Better Man from 2024 fits in this mold as well. If every music biopic had their level of creativity and passion, it wouldn’t bother me so much to see each upcoming release date.
Ultimately, music biopics are a symptom of a bigger issue in Hollywood: the reliance on the “old ways” to pull in audiences rather than trying for unique, creative ideas. What began as a celebration of artistry and success has turned into a never-ending cycle to continue capitalizing on every musician with name recognition. They’re formulaic, studio-driven and, with few exceptions, thinly-veiled attempts at award bait and box office glory rather than genuine pieces of art. The irony, of course, is that the very artists these films deify built their legacies on taking risks and defying conventions—the exact form of creativity Hollywood seems unwilling to embrace.