How the biopic became the new must-have IP for film studios

What do Elvis Pres­ley, Mamie Till, and Wein­stein scan­dal reporters Jodi Kan­tor and Megan Twohey have in com­mon? All have recent­ly received the Hol­ly­wood biopic treat­ment – in addi­tion to Ronald Rea­gan, Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, Whit­ney Hous­ton, Emi­ly Bron­të, and many more. The bio­graph­i­cal film is one of the hottest trends in Hol­ly­wood and shows no signs of slow­ing down, hav­ing con­tributed a slew of this year’s biggest and most acclaimed films, from Elvis to Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.

The biopic itself is noth­ing new. It has been a pro­duc­tion sta­ple for most of film his­to­ry, includ­ing clas­sics like Judith of Bethu­lia (1914), Young Mr. Lin­coln (1939), Lawrence of Ara­bia (1962), Rag­ing Bull (1980), and Catch Me If You Can (2002). But start­ing in the ear­ly 2000s, the num­ber of biopics pro­duced in Hol­ly­wood began to grow – a trend which con­tin­ued into the 2010s. Today the biopic is up there with the super­hero movie as one of the biggest and most con­sis­tent types of film being made in Hollywood.

What lift­ed the biopic to its cen­tral sta­tus in the indus­try today? The answer most like­ly has to do with the decline of the medi­um bud­get film, those which typ­i­cal­ly run a pro­duc­tion cost of between $5 mil­lion and $80 mil­lion. That’s enough to pro­duce a well-made, respectable movie with a big star but with few extrav­a­gances – in between a low-bud­get art film and a big-bud­get block­buster. Think of a court­room dra­ma like A Few Good Men, a high-end hor­ror film like The Shin­ing, or a romance like Shake­speare in Love (two of which, it should be said, were based on pre­ex­ist­ing intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, and the third on his­tor­i­cal figures).

The prob­lem is that over the last 75 years, movie the­ater atten­dance has plum­met­ed. A 2021 Gallup poll revealed that the aver­age Amer­i­can had vis­it­ed the movie the­ater a mean of only 1.4 times in the entire past twelve months. Although this shock­ing­ly low num­ber can part­ly be attrib­uted to the COVID the­atri­cal slump, even between 2001 – 2007 that num­ber was still only 4.8 times a year. Com­pare this to the fact that in 1947 around 60% of Amer­i­cans went at least once a week, accord­ing to Busi­ness Insid­er.

The sad real­i­ty is that peo­ple don’t go to the cin­e­ma much these days. For many, it just doesn’t make sense to pay between $10 ‑20 to see a movie when they could stay home for free and watch some­thing on Net­flix, HBO Max, YouTube, or any of the oth­er stream­ing ser­vices at their fin­ger­tips. But when they do go out, most audi­ences want to see some­thing they can’t get (typ­i­cal­ly) from those oth­er sources– usu­al­ly a block­buster with a mas­sive bud­get and spec­tac­u­lar effects. Com­bined, these fac­tors – declin­ing tick­et sales, the rise of TV and stream­ing, and (as Matt Damon dis­cussed in a recent inter­view) the col­lapse of the DVD mar­ket – have all hol­lowed out the medi­um bud­get space. For the most part, these movies don’t make mon­ey any­more, so present a larg­er fis­cal risk to producers.

As stu­dios have dis­cov­ered, one of the only semi-reli­able ways to lure view­ers out of their liv­ing rooms is to tap into a prop­er­ty that the pub­lic already has a proven inter­est in: pre-exist­ing fran­chis­es like Mar­vel, Star Wars, or Juras­sic Park; min­ing old IP to cre­ate a new fran­chise, such as Top Gun; adap­ta­tions of a best-sell­ing book or video game like last year’s Unchart­ed or Where the Craw­dads Sing; or a reboot of/​sequel to a major series like Hal­loween. Giv­en how uncom­pro­mis­ing the film mar­ket has become, there’s not much lee­way to ven­ture far from these time-test­ed paths.

Con­sid­er that out of the fifty high­est gross­ing films in his­to­ry, as record­ed by Box Office Mojo, only five were not part of a fran­chise at the time of their release: Frozen, Zootopia, Titan­ic, Avatar, and Juras­sic Park. Of these five, all still relied on some form of name recog­ni­tion: Frozen and Zootopia as prod­ucts of the beloved Walt Dis­ney Pic­tures; Titan­ic and Avatar from the mind of direc­tor James Cameron, as well as the famous ship (for the for­mer), and on the nov­el­ty of the 3D gim­mick (for the lat­ter); and Juras­sic Park on that of Steven Spiel­berg and the best-sell­ing Michael Crich­ton source nov­el. If one wants to make mon­ey, fran­chis­es and name recog­ni­tion are sim­ply the way to go.

Enter the bio­graph­i­cal film. By cen­ter­ing the sto­ry around a well-known indi­vid­ual, a stu­dio is able to great­ly increase the mar­ketabil­i­ty of a medi­um bud­get film that might oth­er­wise strug­gle at the box office. Con­sid­er, for exam­ple, Andrew Dominik’s con­tro­ver­sial Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe biopic Blonde. Stripped of Monroe’s name recog­ni­tion, it’s a small-scale char­ac­ter dra­ma that explores the inner con­flict of a trou­bled actress over a slow, con­tem­pla­tive, almost three hour run­time. There are no explo­sive action scenes or world-end­ing stakes, most peo­ple have nev­er read Joyce Car­ol Oates’ doorstop of a nov­el that served as the source mate­r­i­al, and Ana de Armas – while a good actress –is not the sort of A‑Lister whose name recog­ni­tion can car­ry an entire film. In oth­er words, pre­cise­ly the kind of medi­um bud­get film that would nor­mal­ly fail to draw view­ers in any seri­ous num­ber today.

Blonde is finan­cial­ly non­vi­able until one ele­ment is intro­duced: the strug­gling woman in ques­tion is Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe. Sud­den­ly, people’s ears perk up. By focus­ing on a house­hold name, the biopic film is able to entice view­ers to see a movie they oth­er­wise might not. Mon­roe is a world-famous actress who comes with a built-in fan base ready to go, and has enough cul­tur­al cache that even those who may nev­er have seen one of her films are still inter­est­ed in a movie about her. The way this works is real­ly not so dif­fer­ent from com­ic book movies like Ant-Man or Black Adam, which draw in view­ers even with less­er-known characters.

Clear­ly this strat­e­gy works. 2018’s Bohemi­an Rhap­sody raked in a stag­ger­ing $910 mil­lion on an esti­mat­ed $55 mil­lion bud­get, mak­ing it not only the high­est-gross­ing biopic ever, but also the high­est-gross­ing dra­ma in his­to­ry. It’s not every day that a mid-bud­get dra­ma makes near­ly a bil­lion dol­lars. The bio­graph­i­cal ele­ment intro­duces entire­ly new finan­cial pos­si­bil­i­ties, while still main­tain­ing the movie’s sta­tus as a pres­tige film: a seri­ous work of art that will excite the crit­ics and has a real chance to win an Acad­e­my Award. Bohemi­an Rhap­sody won four Oscars (Best Actor, Film Edit­ing, Sound Edit­ing, and Sound Mix­ing), while Elvis is cur­rent­ly nom­i­nat­ed for six (Best Pic­ture, Actor, Cin­e­matog­ra­phy, Edit­ing, Pro­duc­tion Design, Cos­tume Design, Make­up and Hair­styling, and Best Sound Design), in addi­tion to its impres­sive $287 mil­lion world­wide gross.

A like­ly con­trib­u­tor to the pow­er­house Bohemi­an Rhapsody’s pop­u­lar­i­ty is the way it method­i­cal­ly hits on famous moments from Queen’s career and evokes nos­tal­gia in the view­er – a tac­tic com­mon­ly used in block­buster fran­chise films like Juras­sic World. The movie pro­gress­es through a series of nos­tal­gic moments such as Fred­die Mer­cury meet­ing the band for the first time and instant­ly singing with them in har­mo­ny, young Fred­die lying lazi­ly in bed and play­ing the first few notes of ​“Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” on piano, the band record­ing ​“Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” in stu­dio, the famous Live Aid con­cert of 1985, and so on. In fact, it is so con­cerned with depict­ing all these feel-good moments that it can some­times seem more like a clip com­pi­la­tion or a check­list than a real movie, and spends lit­tle of its time devel­op­ing char­ac­ters in any seri­ous way.

Anoth­er tech­nique that many mod­ern biopics rely on is the recre­ation of famous images from the subject’s life, such as pho­tographs, con­certs, films, etc. This is what makes the enter­tain­er biopic so potent as a mon­ey-mak­ing tool; because musi­cians and film stars live so much of their life in the pub­lic eye, there is nev­er a short­age of such nos­tal­gia-ready, East­er egg-laden moments to draw from. Elvis recre­ates the King’s Las Vegas stage, his home Grace­land, his mem­o­rable out­fits, and many of his famous per­for­mances on stage, tele­vi­sion, and film. Blonde recre­ates sev­er­al icon­ic moments from Monroe’s career, includ­ing the ​“Dia­monds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” dance num­ber from Gen­tle­men Pre­fer Blondes, the scene in The Sev­en Year Itch where her skirt is blown up by a gust of air, and even pho­tos of her with then-hus­band Joe DiMaggio.

As with Mar­vel movies, these East­er eggs pro­vide a sense of reward for the fans who can spot them, as well as cre­at­ing a feel­ing of being in the in-group — a way for the direc­tor to say to the eagle-eyed view­er, ​“You’re a true fan, like us.” Fur­ther­more, many scenes in Bohemi­an Rhap­sody are delib­er­ate­ly writ­ten to enhance this in-group feel­ing for fans of Queen. After record­ing their album A Night at the Opera, for exam­ple, the band has a con­tentious meet­ing with fic­tion­al record exec­u­tive Ray Fos­ter (played by Mike Myers).

Fos­ter refus­es to make ​“Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” the sin­gle for the album, say­ing it has no chance at com­mer­cial suc­cess because it’s too exper­i­men­tal for pop­u­lar tastes. After the band storms out of the meet­ing, Fos­ter grum­bles to his employ­ees, ​“If they’re not care­ful, by the end of the year no one will know the name Queen!” Myers deliv­ers the line with such a hard empha­sis on ​“Queen” that it comed­ical­ly empha­sizes how wrong he is. We laugh at Fos­ter and with the band, and are encour­aged to feel like a mem­ber of the group by doing so – an effec­tive tech­nique to gen­er­ate pos­i­tive emo­tions for fans of Queen.

Oth­er than those about enter­tain­ers, the most com­mon type of bio­graph­i­cal film in Hol­ly­wood today is the social issue biopic. These movies, like 2022’s Till and She Said, tell sto­ries relat­ing to racism, gen­der dis­crim­i­na­tion, or oth­er social issues such as judi­cial reform (2019’s Just Mer­cy). These are often more seri­ous in tone, and, because they tell social­ly impor­tant sto­ries with the weight of truth, are often per­fect ​‘Oscar bait’ movies. How­ev­er they, like polit­i­cal and sports biopics, are less con­sis­tent finan­cial­ly than those about pop­u­lar enter­tain­ers. Both Till and She Said finan­cial­ly under­per­formed, while in pre­vi­ous years 12 Years A Slave and Sel­ma fared much better.

The strate­gies that seem to work best at the box office are the exploita­tion of name recog­ni­tion, the evo­ca­tion of nos­tal­gia, the inclu­sion of East­er eggs, and a light-heart­ed atmos­phere that cel­e­brates the sub­ject with­out much inter­ro­ga­tion (Elvis, for exam­ple, is uncrit­i­cal of Presley’s appro­pri­a­tion of Black music or the fact that his future wife Priscil­la was 14 years old to his 24 when they began dat­ing). The enter­tain­er biopic is by far the most con­ducive to all of these, and this is why it’s the most con­sis­tent bio­graph­i­cal mon­ey mak­er. Oth­er forms, like the social issue biopic, usu­al­ly refuse many of these easy win strate­gies and are often based on less­er known sub­jects. Till was wide­ly praised by crit­ics, but the racist atroc­i­ties of the Jim Crow South are not exact­ly the light-heart­ed escapism that the audi­ence-at-large are look­ing for, and the name Emmett Till does not quite have the same glob­al appeal as Elvis Presley.

But in all its forms, the biopic offers rel­a­tive sta­bil­i­ty and con­sis­ten­cy in an indus­try where medi­um bud­get films so often fail. It allows stu­dios to round out their slate and pro­duce some­thing oth­er than a super­hero film, and with a much bet­ter shot at win­ning an Oscar too. This is why the bio­graph­i­cal film has become such a major trend in recent years, and why it won’t be slow­ing down any time soon – 2023 will see the release of films about Napoleon, Priscil­la Pres­ley, Robert Oppen­heimer, and Leonard Bern­stein, while projects about Ron­nie Spec­tor, Bob Dylan, Car­ole King, and Fred Astaire are also in devel­op­ment. As long as audi­ences keep turn­ing out in droves, the biopic onslaught will con­tin­ue – at least until they’ve gone through all eight bil­lion humans on Earth.