The Guide #131: Are music biopics the new superhero films?
This year’s surprise hit at the box office has been Bob Marley: One Love. The biopic of the reggae icon has grossed over $170m and counting, meaning it’s only behind Kung Fu Panda 4 and Dune: Part Two in 2024 receipts. Next month sees the release of Back to Black, an Amy Winehouse biopic that is expected to perform strongly on the back of a slew of free promo for its questionable likenesses and ghoulish portrayal of the ill-fated singer. Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson, Grateful Dead, Billy Joel, Boy George, Maria Callas, Linda Ronstadt, Fred Astaire, Carole King, George Michael, Bee Gees, Keith Moon and the Beatles (times four, one for each member) – all have biopics about them due in the coming months.
While Hollywood today is dominated by sequels, remakes and comic book extended universes, 2023 saw the decline of the superhero movie. While the summer slate is still headlined by a couple of comic book titles (notably Deadpool & Wolverine and Joker 2) it does appear that audience demand has peaked and that the superhero movie is finally going “the way of the western” as predicted by Steven Spielberg a decade ago. Forever in search of a new trend capable of buffeting their revenues, studios are increasingly looking towards music biopics to provide reliable income (theatrical chains expect this year’s North American box office to be down 11% on 2023’s strong performance).
Although grounded in reality and often featuring mature themes (plenty of sex and drugs amid the rock’n’roll) music biopics ape superhero movies in that they come steeped in mythology, and with an eager audience of already devoted fans baked in, essentially allowing the studios to have their cake (compete for awards) and eat it (cash out).
In essence, 20th-century pop culture represents an extended universe that studios and film-makers can mine for profit. It doesn’t hurt that these films typically don’t cost a bomb, with most of the budget going on music rights. Not that you necessarily need to shell out for the actual songs: Nowhere Boy, England is Mine, and Stardust show you can work around the lack of hits by focusing on the origin story. What’s more these films have the potential for huge upside if they can find a large audience beyond fans. Prior to Oppenheimer, Bohemian Rhapsody ($910m) was the highest-grossing biopic of all time and Elvis, Rocketman and Straight Outta Compton all performed brilliantly relative to their $40m to $80m budgets.
Music biopics also represent a way of keeping actor fees to a minimum – Austin Butler only got a reported $700,000 for portraying Elvis. Of course, the best ones feature a lead actor capable of embodying a legendarily charismatic star but the presence of a marquee “character” to some extent ameliorates the need for a huge star. In this sense, biopics mirror superhero movies – they may be huge stars now but Tom Hiddleston, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans and Tom Holland were not exactly massive names prior to getting cast as marquee fictional characters. Perhaps having Elvis or Bob Marley’s name on the poster means it doesn’t matter if the person playing them is a relative no mark.
While some of these films received criticism for being formulaic, hitting recurrent beats such as the artist suffering at the hands of sceptical parents or the band coming together for the first time, before inevitably falling out over the frontman’s outsized share of the glory, they create opportunities for fan service (and parody as in the underrated biopic Weird: The Al Yankovic story). They also create space for more experimental cinema such as Todd Haynes’ Bob Dylan biopic, I’m Not There (with Cate Blanchett’s performance representing a template for how a successful performance need not be a perfect imitation). And just like a superhero, music stars can be recast and reconfigured. Timothée Chalamet’s take on Bob Dylan is just around the corner.
With fan speculation already rife as to who Mendes will cast in his forthcoming Beatles tetralogy (with an individual film devoted to each of the Fab Four, creating a shared universe more commonly found in … superhero movies) it seems the music biopic will remain as a highly profitable Hollywood staple for a few years at least. But whether fans will truly have the appetite for four separate flicks will probably be a defining acid test as to whether they can deliver the sustained success that superhero movies have over the past few decades.
If you want to read the complete version of this newsletter please subscribe to receive The Guide in your inbox every Friday
some kind of financial support to their adult children, who are grappling with higher food and living costs than they did, according to a new study.
Parents who got in touch shared how their adult children could not afford housing, transport, childcare, medical care or insurance without their help – often despite working full-time in skilled jobs – with a number saying their children’s financial dependency was making their own financial outlook bleak.
Various parents also said their children relied on them financially due to unemployment, health or addiction problems, or because their relationship with a romantic partner had broken down.
While some parents said they were only supporting their children temporarily until their situation improved or with one-off payments for cars, healthcare or housing, others said it was a quasi permanent arrangement as their children were unable to meet their living costs.
Roberto says his son has worked various jobs including as a postal worker since he left college.
“Not having work experience in his area of expertise seems to be the biggest roadblock that prevents my son from getting a job, every place asks for two years’ experience,” he said.
“He could get a job in a supermarket or at Trader Joe’s, but those are not his career goals, it’s not what he is trained for and those are low-paying jobs. I don’t want him to compromise. Fortunately, I can afford to support him. If I didn’t, perhaps he would have a greater sense of urgency to get a job, but the truth is that the jobs he is qualified for are not abundant in this area, despite everyone saying constantly that ‘the future is Stem’. I suppose with Silicon Valley nearby, which has had a lot of layoffs, he is competing against many people with years of experience.
“Perhaps my son is doing something wrong, but it’s my impression that this economy is excluding a lot of qualified people.”
One 64-year-old father and small business owner from the north-west, who wanted to stay anonymous, said he and his wife were struggling to support several of their children in adulthood.
“One of our daughters has significant credit card debt that we are helping to pay off,” he said.
“In 2023 she was $24,000 in debt. She is 29 now and married with one child, works in daycare for $18 per hour. Her husband supports the family’s dayto-day needs, while moonlighting on a second job.
“We provide no-cost daycare for their son and feed their family once or twice a week. We have paid about $700 per month on average to retire the debt for the past six months, and we are currently trying to buy a home for them to live in at a low rent to us.
“Another daughter is recently divorced and raising one grandson – we support her financially by letting her drive one of our cars that we insure and pay the bridge fares for. She works two part-time jobs and operates a small business.”
Two other children still live at home, he said, though thankfully don’t require cash support.
“All this does create stress on our home finances. With negative economic headwinds our small business is barely hanging on, while the drain on our savings for each of the kids has us considering taking money out of our retirement to live.”
Retired attorney Allen, 68, from Minnesota, was among a number of people who said they were propping their adult children up financially because they had money they did not need to spend.
“We gave our daughter a $100,000 down payment for a house and loaned her $450k, half of the remaining mortgage, at 3% interest, so that her commercial loan on the balance of the house would be lower,” Allen said.
“We paid for university for our kids so they have no debt. We don’t need the money, my wife and I are very frugal.”
Despite being comfortably able to support his daughter financially, Allen said he had concerns about whether he and his wife were doing the right thing, as their daughter and her partner were earning decent salaries of about $150-170k annually combined.
“I don’t understand the spending and saving habits of the younger generation,” he said. “My daughter and her partner have well-paying jobs, but never seem to have any extra money. They’re always going out for coffee, going out for dinner, splurging on this and that.
“In contrast, our frugality has made our old age very comfortable. My daughter wants to be independent, but I am concerned they will reach old age with no savings.
“We want to do the thing that’s going to make them healthiest and strongest and happiest, but you don’t always know what that is as a parent, whether you’re enabling them or [holding them back]. It’s a weird dynamic.”
Natalie, a 35-year-old freelance ghostwriter and mother of two young children from Portland, Oregon, was one of several people who said they were in receipt of their elderly parents’ financial support.
She says she has been relying on regular payments from her mother of about $1,000 a month for a little over a year.
“My writing pays as much as my husband’s full-time teaching salary, taking our household income to around $70,000 annually, yet we’re unable to make ends meet. Despite my efforts, I’m forced to reach out to my retired mother for help,” she says.
“After $2,200 rent, grocery costs, a $900 healthcare premium, preschool tuition for one of our children which has risen to $750 a month, and over $1,000 in additional utilities, we find ourselves underwater at the end of every month.”
Her mother, Natalie says, now fully retired at the age of 62 after decades as an ER nurse, is currently contemplating finding work again to support three of her five adult children, all aged in their 30s and 40s.
“We all live in high-cost areas, and our mother is watching her savings dwindle because she is tragically willing to support us financially. My mother is an endless giver and is now finding herself on a very, very tight budget as well. She has been looking at transcribing jobs she can do from home, which breaks our heart. We have a weekly family discourse to discuss how we can pay her back,” Natalie explained.
“I feel every day as if I’m failing, yet given the number of hours in the day, I don’t see what else I could possibly do. My day starts at 6am and ends at 1am.”
For the past six months, Natalie and her husband have been donating blood plasma for cash twice a week, which nets them an additional $450 monthly.
“You’re really run down for a couple of days afterwards, you can get a fever, shakes, chills, that kind of stuff,” Natalie says.
“We talk at least once a month about whether we should move to Portugal, or to France, where my sister lives, anywhere really with socialised medicine and free childcare, those kinds of basic necessities.
“I look at my children, and feel irresponsible to have had them, and I look at my mother, and ache about the position I’m putting her in. I walk my son to preschool, past the tents of homeless thirtysomethings that have started taking over the city, and think, ‘One day, is that going to be me?’”
This economy is excluding a lot of qualified people
Roberto