Hardly a week has gone by this year without the announcement of a new biopic focused on a musician. Some already have major stars attached—Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan, Selena Gomez playing Linda Ronstadt, Jeremy Allen White taking on Bruce Springsteen, Colman Domingo as Nat King Cole. If Frank Sinatra’s family approves, we may even get Leonardo DiCaprio as Ol’ Blue Eyes and Jennifer Lawrence as his second wife, Ava Gardner. And there are still more projects rolling our way, including movies in the works about Michael Jackson, the Bee Gees, Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and even ’80s wimp-rockers Air Supply. Just last month, the white whale was landed, with the news that Sam Mendes will be directing a four-part feature series about the Beatles, scheduled for release in 2027. Yes, that’s a movie for each of them.
The recent success of Bob Marley: One Love, which has grossed $177 million worldwide, made the potential of these films clear, while early reviews of the Amy Winehouse story Back to Black, coming in May, reveal the high-wire act required to satisfy both the diehard fans and the artists’ families and estates.
Bruce SpringsteenBy Clayton Call/Getty Images.
Clearly, the record-breaking box office of 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody—which was the highest-grossing biopic of all time until last summer’s Oppenheimer—followed by such hits as Rocketman and Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, escalated interest in the format. But there are other factors that have made music-related biopics catch fire. “The success of Bohemian Rhapsody raised eyebrows about what could happen when you’re successful with a biographical film,” says Larry Mestel, CEO of Primary Wave Music, a leading music publisher and talent management company. “It’s been a big explosion. For many years, artists didn’t want to make films that depicted their life story because they were afraid of how it would come out. There’s a much greater openness now that there’s been a bunch of these films that have done very well—their success, but also how the stories have been told and the quality being as vivid as it has been.”
James Keach, who produced the 2005 Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line and is currently involved in the Ronstadt feature, has seen firsthand how dramatically the market has changed. “It took 13 years to get Walk the Line made,” he says, “and it was only because of the success of the Ray Charles film [2004’s Ray] that it got made, and then it became a huge hit. I think it set the stage for the studios to go, Wow, there’s an audience out there for this stuff.”
The early streaming era, with new outlets and opportunities for distribution, saw a boom in music documentaries, including such acclaimed films as Amy; What Happened, Miss Simone?; and Get Back. In fact, the subjects of virtually every one of this recent wave of biopics has already been featured in a doc, which are generally cheaper and quicker to make. “A lot of people start with the documentary and then work their way up,” says Mestel. “Documentaries are much smaller-ticket items, so they’re easier to get done.”
Nat King ColeBy Bettmann/Getty Images.
If you’re surprised by some of the names getting the biopic treatment, it’s not just that Hollywood is running out of A-list musicians. In the last few years, many of the legendary artists of rock’s greatest generation have sold off some combination of their publishing catalog, their recordings, and their name and likeness, sometimes for hundreds of millions of dollars. “When an artist sells us their music, part of the conversation is always around, What’s the future? How are we going to help market and grow the artist’s reach?” says Mestel, whose company has acquired the catalogs of such legends as Marley, Prince, James Brown, and Stevie Nicks. “Things go in ebbs and flows, but the biographical film seems to be the biggest driver of opportunity for artists.” He points to the 2022 movie I Wanna Dance with Somebody: “Our Whitney Houston film allowed us to make countless brand deals, and streams went up significantly. With a successful biographical film, you reengage fans, there’s a new youth culture for that artist, and the brand itself dramatically increases.”
Music biopics have long been Oscar bait (Sissy Spacek for Coal Miner’s Daughter, Jamie Foxx for Ray, and Rami Malek for Bohemian Rhapsody are among the trophy winners), but they’re hardly a sure thing, as we learned when Kevin Spacey played Bobby Darin in Beyond the Sea and Jennifer Hudson took on Aretha Franklin in Respect. But especially with such major investments behind these historic catalogs, there’s greater motivation for the high-risk, high-reward opportunity. “There’s risks every time you get on the freeway, but you gotta get there,” says Keach. “Of course everybody wants to recoup their investment, and if you invest $100 million or something, you’re not gonna sit around and go, ‘Gee, I wonder what we’re gonna do today?’ You better get out there and get some of that money back.”
We love the stories of musicians because they’re full of struggle and scandal, the dark and the light, but these films always require a negotiation with the families and estates about what exactly they’re willing to address in exchange for allowing the music to be used. Initial responses to Back to Black, directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, have praised Marisa Abela’s performance as Amy Winehouse, but suggested the film soft-pedals the roles her father, Mitch Winehouse, and her ex-husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, played in the singer’s tragic trajectory.
Linda Ronstadtby Larry Hulst/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images.
None of these projects, however, seems as fraught as Michael, the Antoine Fuqua–directed Michael Jackson biopic scheduled to premiere in April 2025. Will his estate—especially given that its coexecutors, John Branca and John McClain, are producers of the film—permit the depiction of such issues as allegations of sexual abuse by Jackson and his treatment at the hands of his father? Producer Graham King, who also served as a producer on Bohemian Rhapsody, has insisted that the film will “get into all of it,” describing Jackson as “a man with a very complicated life.”
“It’s not just about making the film and putting it up on the screen, it’s about protecting the legacy,” says Mestel, who says his company is now developing movies about Boy George and Bing Crosby. “You want the story told properly—the right story and the true story—but we’ve learned that it’s also very important to tell the story that the artist or the family, the heirs, are comfortable with.” We’re about to find out who can walk that tightrope without falling off.
