Biography is a mainstay genre of literature. Biographies often top the lists of best-selling books. There is even a coveted Pulitzer Prize for the category each year. Recently, these have included works on Malcolm X and George Washington.
Biographies have made the jump from the old media of books to the newer one of film. Among the most popular are those about musicians. The earliest example of the genre (sort of) is a short released by the Edison Company in 1909 with the self-explanatory title “The Origin of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.” It depicts the moment the great composer was inspired to create that famous piece. Other classical composers and musicians, including Mozart, Schubert, Liszt, Puccini and Paganini, were the subject of biopics in the first part of the 20th century, as were big band and jazz legends like Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Red Nichols and Gene Krupa.
More recently, numerous country, rock and rap stars have received the filmed biography treatment. To identify the most successful music biopic of all time, 24/7 Tempo reviewed gross domestic box office figures (not adjusted for inflation) from Rotten Tomatoes, an online movie and TV review aggregator, for the more than 20,000 movies in the database identified as “musical,” “music” and “biography” on IMDb, an online movie database owned by Amazon. Movies about fictional musicians were excluded from consideration. Information on plot and stars is from IMDb.
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These were the top five music biopics:
- “Bohemian Rhapsody,” in which Rami Malek plays Queen frontman Freddie Mercury
- “Walk the Line,” with Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon as Johnny and June Carter Cash
- “Rocketman,” starring Taron Egerton as Elton John
- “Ray,” for which Jamie Foxx won an Oscar playing Ray Charles
- “La Bamba,” featuring Lou Diamond Phillips as the pioneering Chicano rock star Ritchie Valens
Several of the movies we considered are about performers who died tragically young. Valens was only 17 when he died in a plane crash. Tejano music star Selena Quintanilla-Pérez was 23 and rapper Tupac Shakur was 25 when they were shot to death. Jim Morrison, the main subject of “The Doors,” died at the age of 27.
The highest-grossing biopic of all time is “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Released in 2018, it had ticket sales of $216.3 million. The film tells the story of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, played by Rami Malek, from the formation of the band up to the 1985 Live Aid performance at Wembley Stadium.
Click see which music biopics are the highest grossing of all time.
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