It’s prestige-cinema season — that time of year when studios roll out their award hopefuls in search of a little golden statue. Over the past several years, a new genre has slotted right alongside period dramas and challenging auteur epics: the musical biopic. From Rami Malek’s Oscar-winning turn as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody to Timothée Chalamet’s portrayal of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown and Jeremy Allen White’s Springsteen-inspired Deliver Me From Nowhere, the musical biopic has become a proving ground for A-listers. It’s a test of both physical transformation and artistic immersion. The question is: are these actors interested in artistic ambition or merely checking another box on the road to what they hope is award glory?
The modern wave of musical biopics kicked off in the early 2000s with Ray (2004) and Walk the Line (2005). In Ray, Jamie Foxx won both the Academy Award and Golden Globe for his portrayal of Ray Charles, while Walk the Line earned Joaquin Phoenix a Golden Globe for his depiction of Johnny Cash and Reese Witherspoon an Oscar for her turn as June Carter. These films helped redefine the genre with nuanced, human portrayals that embraced their subjects’ flaws as much as their genius.
After a quiet stretch, Bohemian Rhapsody reignited the genre. The 2018 film became the highest-grossing music biopic of all time, earning an incredible $900 million worldwide, and sparking a new boom era of prestige musician portrayals. Malek’s Oscar win reframed the musical biopic as legitimate awards bait — paving the way for Rocketman, Elvis, and the rest. It’s easy to see why actors are lining up for these roles: the box office returns are strong and the the characters are iconic. The upside can be huge. For studios, it’s the perfect mix of familiar IP, built-in audiences, and emotional nostalgia that all but guarantees attention, if not acclaim.
Every actor seems to approach musicianship differently. Malek’s Bohemian Rhapsody turn set the modern template: a transformative physical performance built around a hybrid vocal mix. He sang on set and trained for months, but the final soundtrack blended his voice with Mercury’s archival recordings and those of a soundalike singer.
Then there are the actors pushing closer to the real thing. Austin Butler in Elvis sang nearly all the early-career numbers himself before the filmmakers blended his vocals with Presley’s in later sequences. His exhaustive voice and movement training blurred the line between embodiment and possession. It’s the kind of total immersion that makes audiences question where the actor ends and the icon begins, so much so that he seemed to have hung on to his accent long after filming wrapped.
Timothée Chalamet, meanwhile, has reportedly learned dozens of Dylan songs on guitar and harmonica for A Complete Unknown, working with vocal and instrumental coaches to capture Dylan’s idiosyncratic delivery. And Jeremy Allen White’s turn as Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere goes full method: he sings and plays guitar himself, with Springsteen personally praising his performance.
Now it seems as though we’ve reached an era where credibility depends not just on nailing the look, but the sound as well.
After audiences burned out on CGI superhero stories (but studios still wanting the sure bet) they’ve found a new kind of hero at the movie theatre: rock stars. These films are coded as authenticity, but at the end of the day, they’re safe IP. Why invent a new myth when you can repackage a familiar one? Next year brings a Michael Jackson biopic starring his nephew Jaafar Jackson and Colman Domingo as Michael’s father, Joe Jackson. (Domingo is also panning to star in an upcoming biopic about Nat King Cole.) In 2028, four separate Beatles movies from director Sam Mendes are planned for release at the same time — one about each member, with Paul Mescal as McCartney, Harris Dickinson as Lennon, Joseph Quinn as Harrison, and SHARP cover alum Barry Keoghan as Starr.
At this point, the musical biopic has more in common with a superhero franchise than a work of genuine revelation. Each new film promises to “reimagine” a legend, but they’re really exercises in brand extension: glossy, prestige-coded IP that lets studios mine nostalgia the way Marvel mines the pages of old comics. The upcoming Beatles series practically confirms it: we’ll be buying tickets to experience the BCU, the Beatles Cinematic Universe. These musical biopics deliver a lot of the same beats again and again, with new faces plugged into the same formula.
For all the awards-season sheen and meticulous craft, it’s hard to argue that we come away from these films knowing anything new about the artists they depict. What’s left is a familiar tune: another two-hour tribute that looks great, sounds convincing, wins awards, and tells us mostly what we already knew. Still, there are worse ways to spend a couple of hours. When the lights dim and the songs we love start to play, it’s hard to deny how comforting it is. After all, who doesn’t love a good cover song?
FEATURE PHOTO: JEREMY ALLEN WHITE AND BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN. PHOTO BY DAVE BENETT/GETTY IMAGES FOR SPOTIFY.
