What does the following list of movie have in common: Bohemian Rhapsody, Pearl Harbor, The Greatest Showman, The Pursuit Of Happyness, Straight Outta Compton, Elvis, American Hustle, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Pocahontas, Patch Adams, The Sound of Freedom, Erin Brockovich, The Vow, Walk The Line, Fahrenheit 9/11, The Butler, Remember The Titans, Captain Phillips, The Aviator, and Bad Grampa have in common? All of them are the top 20 films based on real life events all-time in the North American domestic market (which includes the USA and Canada) in the order of gross domestic box office that have made more than $100 million in the theaters. This is, of course, not adjusted for inflation, but it is stunning to me that over the course of the entire history of movie theaters that only twenty films have made more than $100 million at the box office that are based on real life events, and no such film has made more in the domestic market than $216,303,339 in 2018 for the biopic about the band Queen.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most successful films about real life events feature a few threads in common. Many of them are particularly well-regarded movies whose music was a big part of the draw in the success of the film. Many of the films have at their center dramatic performances by lead actors that were awarded with prestige nominations for Best Actor or Actress. Aside from Remember The Titans and Straight Outta Compton, many of these films did pretty good business overseas as well as in the United States, with the runaway leader in international box office being Bohemian Rhapsody’s $665,901,921. Sound Of Freedom, which has only been out for 23 days as of the writing of this essay, is already ranked at #11, and is not far from passing a few more spots to have a solid spot in the top ten, even before it releases in any foreign markets. Given how poorly films about the real world do in Hollywood, it is particularly remarkable when a film about real life events catches on, signifying that something about the movie and what it portrays strikes a definite nerve.

Given the generally poor box office receipts that films about historical events have, where even the most successful films only make around $100 million to a bit more than $200 million, or less than the recent Spiderman movie or the Super Mario Brothers movie, which have both made well more than $300 million this summer at the domestic box office, it is remarkable that some people have thought that it was a good financial idea to try to make a sprawling and expensive historical epic that was based on real events. Doing so seems a sure way of being taken to the cleaners and winding up bankrupt as a result, and failed historical epics have bankrupted several studios over the course of time. At best, films based on real events tend to be prestige films where actors demonstrate their ability to play historically important personages and where audiences cheer on portrayals of real life that they particularly enjoy. It is little wonder that films about sports, music, and warfare, as well as plucky underdogs, are so popular among films based on real people.

It just so happens, perhaps unsurprisingly, that this sort of film has always been of great personal interest to me. As a student of history, it is little surprise that I have often found films about history to be deeply interesting. This is not to say that many of these films have been true to history, or necessarily all that enjoyable. But there is at least the hope that the films will be both compelling as well as true to life in some fashion. Perhaps the best films in the genre of real life films from the perspective of audiences as well as movie studios are those films that do not cost a great deal to make but which feature compelling acting performances and something that strikes a real emotional chord with an audience that makes the film far more popular than the usual historical fare and a genuine success. If you can keep costs under control, and find real life that is compelling to audiences, you can actually make money on such a film. Instead, many people make films about real life and think that one needs expensive spectacle to drive audiences to films about historical people and events, when there is simply not a huge audience for such films, as a general rule.