With the release of the first Michael teaser, and amidst the release of Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, it's worth doing a pulse check on the state of music biopics. Are they still a safe staple in the awards race, or is genre fatigue catching up with them?
Early Oscar predictions from hobbyists on Award Expert positioned Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere as a contender across the board, fueled by Jeremy Allen White's expected transformation and the awards-friendliness of music biopics.
The world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in late August drew widespread acclaim for the performances of Jeremy Allen White and Jeremy Strong, and the film earned positive reviews lauding its portrayal of an artist's search for authenticity. Within weeks of its premiere, 62% of Award Expert users were projecting a Best Picture nomination.
As more reviews rolled in, however, the overall critical consensus grew less favorable and scores settled at 59% on Rotten Tomatoes and 59 on Metacritic. Buzz faded with an underwhelming opening weekend at the box office. At this stage, the film's awards prospects have narrowed, leaving White's Best Actor bid as the primary point of contention.
Even so, White is steadily losing momentum and now sits at #5 on Award Expert, with only 46% of users still predicting a nomination. Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere has likewise fallen off the Best Picture radar, currently at #13 with just 13% of users backing it. Users have also pivoted towards contenders like Adam Sandler in Best Supporting Actor over Jeremy Strong.
Are audiences and voters tiring of music biopics?
Perhaps audiences and filmgoers are contending with growing fatigue surrounding music biopics. Perhaps A Complete Unknown left too big of shoes to fill after its stellar turnout on nominations morning. This raises the question of what makes or breaks a music biopics as an Oscar vehicles, and whether the bar is becoming more difficult to clear.
Bohemian Rhapsody triumphed at the 2019 Oscars, demonstrating that a music biopic could dominate awards season without robust critical recognition (even drawing disdain from critics). That year proved especially prolific for the genre, with two music-based films (Bohemian Rhapsody and A Star is Born) securing Best Picture nominations and collectively winning a combined seven awards. Conversely, in the following year the sole nomination and win Rocketman managed was for Best Original Song, despite being warmly received by critics. Taken together, this suggests that music biopics have had a variable track record with the Academy, revealing a pattern of alternating favor and fatigue as the genre reaches saturation. These films seem to have a lower bar to clear in terms of critical reception, but are often carried by the audience reception and whether the film is sensational.
Music biopics account for 46 acting nominations, 14 of which resulted in wins. The genre often pushes actors toward near-unrecognizable vocal, physical, and behavioral transformations, which the Academy tends to recognize. Music biopics frequently earn acting nominations while being overlooked elsewhere. A couple recent examples include The United States vs. Billie Holiday which received a single Best Actress nomination for Andra Day, and Judy which won Renée Zellweger Best Actress with only an accompanying Makeup & Hairstyling nomination.
More recently, Maestro and A Complete Unknown accumulated a total of fifteen Oscar nominations, demonstrating that music biopics can generate substantial awards recognition even when the films themselves do not secure wins. Timothée Chalamet came close to winning Best Actor for his portrayal of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, defeating Adrien Brody at the SAG awards.
In addition to being more intimate and less acclaimed, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere may suffer from a thematic and chronological proximity to last year's A Complete Unknown. Similar to how Rocketman failed to capture the zeitgeist in the wake of Bohemian Rhapsody, biopics often have to employ distinct narrative choices to counter genre fatigue.
"Michael" and the future of music biopics
The two-part biopic, Michael , is slated for a 2026 release and will offer another data point for assessing music biopics as Oscar vehicles. While it's likely to be massively successful commercially, critics might not catch the same bug for the Jackson-estate-produced project which seems interested in sanitizing Jackson's image. Will it be embraced by awards voters, or will genre fatigue outpace commercial success?