<\/p>\n
When Antoine Fuqua\u2019s \u201cMichael\u201d<\/a> hits theaters this weekend, it will mark the end of a lengthy journey to the big screen. Or the end of the beginning, at least, as sequels appear to be coming whether we like it or not.<\/p>\n The Michael Jackson biopic battled myriad production troubles (many of which were self-inflicted<\/a>), but it\u2019s finally ready to entertain audiences looking for a dose of \u201980s pop nostalgia. If you\u2019re a big Michael Jackson fan, it\u2019s an excuse to revisit some of your favorite songs and explore the life of a deeply complicated entertainer. But if you\u2019re getting tired of music biopics, you\u2019d be forgiven for thinking it\u2019s just more of the same.<\/p>\n The past decade has seen the release of films about Elvis Presley, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Queen, Bob Marley, Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, Robbie Williams, Weird Al Yankovic, and now, Michael Jackson. And the trend does not appear to be slowing down any time soon.<\/p>\n In 2028, Sony will release four Beatles biopics from Sam Mendes (one for each Beatle, naturally). Meanwhile, Universal announced a new Snoop Dogg biopic at CinemaCon<\/a>. And that\u2019s before we get into high-profile development projects without official start dates, like Ridley Scott\u2019s Bee Gees biopic \u201cYou Should Be Dancing\u201d and Cameron Crowe\u2019s long-gestating Joni Mitchell biopic that may or may not star Meryl Streep. While news has been quiet on both fronts, Martin Scorsese was also attached to direct movies about Jerry Garcia and Frank Sinatra in the past five years.<\/p>\n All of which raises the question\u2026 when does it end?<\/em><\/p>\n Hollywood studios have never seemed interested in leaving audiences wanting more, and it\u2019s fair to assume that these films will keep being made until demand dies down. (And probably for another five years after that.) Despite every online cinephile you know telling you how bored they are with music biopics, demand continues to be healthy. They don\u2019t all hit, but when films like \u201cA Complete Unknown\u201d ($140 million worldwide) and \u201cElvis\u201d ($288 million worldwide) are comfortably pulling in nine-figure box office hauls, studios will want to keep the party going.<\/p>\n But what about the supply? Films about beloved rock, pop, and rap stars of the late 20th century have been coming out at such a clip that it\u2019s fair to wonder if we\u2019re going to run out of source material soon. If you stopped someone on the street and asked them to name the 10 biggest rock acts of the past half-century, you could probably direct them to movies about eight or nine of their picks. There\u2019s still some low-hanging fruit (it can\u2019t be long before we get a Rolling Stones movie), but the pool is only getting smaller, and the IP isn\u2019t as easily replenishable as comic books or video games. But if there\u2019s one thing I know about Hollywood, it\u2019s that when there\u2019s a track record of box office success to be repeated, somebody finds a way.<\/p>\n Maybe musicians go the way of the superhero, with studios trying to squeeze as many films as possible out of the IP they already control. In recent years, music biopics have begun to shift away from \u201cWalk Hard\u201d-style birth-to-death sagas toward specific stories about distinct chapters in a musician\u2019s life. \u201cA Complete Unknown\u201d chronicled Bob Dylan\u2019s transition from folk to rock with his infamous Newport performance in 1966, while \u201cSpringsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere\u201d focused exclusively on the recording of the \u201cNebraska\u201d album.<\/p>\n While the narrowed focus brought artistic benefits, there are certainly more stories to tell from Dylan\u2019s and Springsteen\u2019s lives. Perhaps the next era of biopics will see actors signing multi-picture deals to play their rock-and-roll lookalikes for years. Sony\u2019s ambitious rollout of the four \u201cBeatles\u201d movies will be a crucial test of this strategy.<\/p>\n There\u2019s also the possibility that we don\u2019t wait nearly as long to start cashing in on \u201990s and 2000s nostalgia than we did for the \u201960s and \u201970s. If demand is strong enough, perhaps there\u2019s a world where we start seeing Taylor Swift and Beyonc\u00e9 biopics while the subjects are still young and in the prime of their careers. It could even start a trend of stars being more creatively involved in their own biopics than the typical script approval we normally see. Swift has been open about wanting to direct movies for years\u2026 who better to make a film about her own career, which would probably shatter box office records?<\/p>\n As exhausting as the onslaught of biopics can sometimes feel, it\u2019s hard to imagine that production will slow down. Along with the NFL and a few major video games, music is one of the last gasps of American monoculture. Our shared history with musicians of the past half-century outweighs our collective investment in any new IP that has emerged since 2000, and even relative bottom-of-the-barrel names attract attention in ways that original ideas rarely do.<\/p>\n In the end, all of the speculation about increased creativity might be futile. We might all be doomed to talk about new Eddie Money and Peaches and Herb biopics in 2035, even if we don\u2019t know it yet.<\/p>\n Sign up for Indiewire’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Antoine Fuqua\u2019s \u201cMichael\u201d hits theaters this weekend, it will mark the end of a lengthy journey to the big screen. Or the end of the beginning, at least, as sequels appear to be coming whether we like it or not. The Michael Jackson biopic battled myriad production troubles (many of which were self-inflicted), but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2384911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[371598,364487,29332,354748,28851,22650,25615,351896,304696,354978,349779,37098],"class_list":["post-2384910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-amy-winehouse","tag-aretha-franklin","tag-bob-dylan","tag-bob-marley","tag-bruce-springsteen","tag-elton-john","tag-elvis-presley","tag-hollywood-studios","tag-michael-jackson","tag-robbie-williams","tag-sam-mendes","tag-whitney-houston"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/A-Music-Biopic-Supply-Crisis-Is-Looming.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2384910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2384910"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2384910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2384912,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2384910\/revisions\/2384912"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2384911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2384910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2384910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2384910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}