Summary
- The highest grossing biopics cover a range of genres and showcase individuals overcoming challenges to achieve something extraordinary in their lives.
- Box office success is primarily driven by word-of-mouth and audiences finding something special in the biopic subjects that they want to see succeed.
- Biopics like "12 Years a Slave" and "Hidden Figures" have been both critical and financial successes, proving that uplifting stories can resonate with viewers and be among the highest grossing biopics of all time.
The highest grossing biopics in history include a strong mix of genres, from the historical epic to musical biopics to the story of regular people in extraordinary situations. When it comes to these movies, the entire purpose is to show audiences how a person can overcome all odds and end up doing something spectacular in their lives, whether this is something that helps the world or something that just shows that they can become special in their own ways. It doesn't matter if a person is a politician, a musical sensation, or a person who overcomes homelessness, the best biopics offer an uplifting story for viewers.
However, not all the highest grossing biopics are equal. There are some that have won countless awards at the Oscars and there are others that achieved public acclaim that seemed to fly right by the critics and award committees. When it comes to box office success, it is all about word-of-mouth, and while awards and critical recognition can play a role in it, what is most important is that people find something special when it comes to the subjects of these biopics and make them someone they want to see succeed. With 2023's Oppenheimer stealing the top spot, there is a biopic for everyone when it comes to the box office winners. All grossing information is from Box Office Mojo.
25 12 Years A Slave (2013) - $187.7 Million
Based on the memoir by Solomon Northup, 12 Years a Slave tells the story of Northup as he was kidnapped as a free man in Washington, D.C. by two conmen and sold into slavery. He ended up working on plantations as an enslaved person in Louisiana for 12 years before he finally was released. With Chiwetel Ejiofor as Solomon and supporting turns from Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Paul Dano, and Lupita Nyong'o, the movie picked up nine Oscar nominations and won the award for Best Picture.
At the box office, 12 Years a Slave brought in 187.7 million worldwide on a production budget of just $22 million, making it a huge financial success story for director Steve McQueen and one of the highest-grossing biopics of all time. It was also a critical hit, with a very high 95 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
24 Rocketman (2019) - $195.3 Million
Rocketman is the highest grossing biopic about Elton John and his rise in the music industry. Taron Egerton is Elton John in this movie, directed by Dexter Fletcher (who worked with Taron Egerton on Eddie the Eagle before this). The film also sees Egerton actually singing the John songs in the movie rather than lip-syncing, which makes it feel different from other musical biopics.
The movie was a huge success, and while it only picked up one Oscar nomination, it did win for Best Original Song. At the box office, Rocketman earned $195.3 million worldwide on a production budget of $40 million, while facing a tough competition that included Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Aladdin.
23 Straight Outta Compton (2015) - $201.6 Million
F. Gary Gray directed one of the highest grossing biopics of all time with Straight Outta Compton in 2015. This musical biopic tells the story of the iconic and legendary hip hop group N.W.A. and takes viewers behind the scenes in the moments of their early careers where they were fighting to make their name while also struggling with racism and hatred every day of their lives.
By the time all was said and done, Straight Outta Compton became the highest-grossing music biopic of all time, although that record has since fallen. It even made $60.2 million in its opening weekend and received good reviews, thanks in part to original members Ice Cube and Dr. Dre serving as producers on the movie.
22 Braveheart (1995) - $213.2 Million
While painted as a historical war epic, Braveheart is a loose biopic of the legendary Sir William Wallace, a Scottish warrior who led his people into the First War of Scottish Independence against King Edward I of England. The script was inspired by the 15th-century epic poem The Actes and Deidis of the Illustre and Vallyeant Campioun Schir William Wallace. Though it was met with high praise, Braveheart was criticized for its historical inaccuracies.
Mel Gibson starred as William Wallace and directed the movie, which went on to pick up 10 Oscar nominations, winning for both Best Picture and Best Director. Overall, it won five total awards at the Oscars, and was also a box office success, earning $213.2 million on a $65-$70 million budget.
21 The Aviator (2004) - $213.7 Million
While he is best known for his gangster genre films, Martin Scorsese has his fair share of biopics in his filmography, and one of the highest grossing biopics of them all was his 2004 movie The Aviator. The movie tells the story of Howard Hughes, a filmmaker and innovator, and Scorsese mostly focuses on Hughes designing aircraft, which later played into his movie Hell's Angels.
The cast was top-notch with Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes and Cate Blanchett as legendary screen star Katherine Hepburn. The movie earned six Oscar nominations, with Blanchett winning Best Actress and the movie picking up the Best Film award. The great cast and awards recognition helped The Aviator finish as one of the highest grossing biopics of all time, with a $213.7 million box office take on a $110 million budget.
20 Public Enemies (2009) - $214.1 Million
Michael Mann directed the crime biopic Public Enemies in 2009, telling the story of bank robber John Dillinger while on the run from FBI agent Melvin Purvis. This highest grossing biopic was based on the non-fiction novel, Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933–34, and had an all-star cast, with Johnny Depp as Dillinger and Christian Bale as Purvis.
While a biopic mostly on John Dillinger, not everything was historically accurate as the information was mostly from the FBI's side, and anything concerning Dillinger's private life was mostly left to creative decisions in the script. This caused the reviews to be mixed, but it was still a nice success at the box office, bringing in $214.1 million on a $100 million production budget, all while competing with a Transformers and Ice Age movie.
19 The Terminal (2004) - $219.1 Million
Steven Spielberg has made several of the highest grossing biopics over his career, and one of the least likely to become a success was The Terminal in 2004. This movie did have a major star in Tom Hanks, but it was not based on someone famous and was mostly a quirky story about a unique, mostly unknown man. The movie is a biopic of Mehran Karimi Nasseri, who lived in Terminal 1 of the Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport in France for 18 years when he was unable to return home after a military coup in his home country, and after France denied him entry.
Spielberg changed the location for the American-made movie to the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City and renamed the character Viktor Navorski, casting Hanks in the role. The Terminal received mostly positive reviews and earned an impressive $219.1 million off a $60 million budget.
18 The Imitation Game (2014) - $233.5 Million
The Imitation Game saw Benedict Cumberbatch star as Alan Turing and was based on his biography, Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges. Turing was the cryptanalyst who helped decrypt German messages for the British government during World War II. The movie also starred Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Charles Dance, and Mark Strong, and it plays out as Turing telling the story of his time in World War II to two officers investigating a break-in at his home.
The life and death of Turing were tragic and this biopic reveals everything in his life, from his greatest success to his tragic demise at the hands of the government he helped in the war. The Imitation Game picked up eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor, but it only won one for the screenplay. It was still a big success at the box office, making $233 million in a small $14 million budget.
17 Hidden Figures (2016) - $235.9 Million
Hidden Figures is a biopic that tells the story of three African-American female mathematicians who helped the United States win the Space Race while they worked at NASA. However, since this took place in the 1960s, the three women remained behind the scenes and received little of the credit compared to their White male counterparts. While all the women were eventually replaced by computers, they played a huge role in John Glenn's rocket launches into space and this movie tells their story.
The cast was superb, with Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monáe as the mathematicians and a supporting cast that includes Kevin Costner, Jim Parsons, Mahershala Ali, and Kirsten Dunst. The movie earned three Oscar nominations, winning none of them, but it still managed to earn $235.9 million on a $25 million budget, making it one of the highest grossing biopics.
16 Sully (2016) - $240.7 Million
Clint Eastwood directed the 2016 biopic Sully, which told the story of Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger as originally told in his autobiography Highest Duty. The movie starred Tom Hanks as Sully, a captain piloting a plane for US Airways that ended up needing to crash land after hitting a flock of birds, which damaged both engines. He ended up landing the plane successfully in the Hudson River and saved all the crew and passengers, becoming a hero.
However, when the National Transportation Safety Board attempt to prove it was a pilot error, rather than a heroic landing, Sully has to set out to prove his innocence and save his career. There was controversy about making the NTSB the villains, and even the real-life Sully felt it was too harsh. However, it made for a good movie and it ended up as one of the highest grossing biopics, making $240.7 million on a $60 million budget.
15 Lincoln (2012) - $275.2 Million
In 2012, Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg teamed up with multi-time Oscar-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis to create a biopic about former United States President Abraham Lincoln. The movie mostly covers the final four months of his life, focusing on his work to abolish slavery and leading up to his death. As expected with the talent involved, the movie was a critical and financial success.
The movie is often credited as one of Spielberg's best biopics and Day-Lewis won yet another Oscar for his role as Lincoln. The movie picked up a total of 12 Oscar nominations, although it only won two of them. Despite that lack of success, it was still a monster success at the box office for the highest grossing biopics, making $275.2 million on a $65 million budget.
14 Elvis (2022) - $288.6 Million
Elvis was a very different sort of musical biopic, taking the story of Elvis Presley's rise to fame and giving it a very glossy and iconic touch thanks to the mind of director Baz Luhrmann. The man behind Moulin Rogue took Elvis and turned him into something as legendary as his real-life counterpart and helped actor Austin Butler win the Golden Globes Award for Best Actor for his role. At the same time, Tom Hanks was polarizing as Col. Tom Parker, but that was all part of Luhrmann's deft touch on the source material.
Butler didn't win at the Oscars, but it still earned eight nominations, including one for Best Picture. It was also a monster success, bringing in $288.6 million on an $85 million budget, one of the highest grossing biopics for musicals and Luhrmann's second-highest-grossing movie following only The Great Gatsby.
13 Dangal (2016) - $303.7 Million
Likely the least known of the highest grossing biopics was the Hindi-language sports movie Dangal. That is because the movie only made $12.3 million when released in the United States. However, despite those low numbers, there are a lot of other countries out there watching movies and this helped Dangal bring in a total of $303.7 million at the worldwide box office.
The movie is about an ex-wrestler who gave up his dream of winning gold for his home country in India because of a lack of financial support. He decides he will one day train his son to follow in his footsteps, but when he has four girls, he realizes this might be another failed dream. When two of his daughters proved to be tougher than he ever believed, he sets out to train them into world-class wrestlers. The movie was a hit in both India and in the Chinese markets.
12 The Pursuit Of Happyness (2006) - $307.1 Million
Based on the memoir by Chris Gardner, The Pursuit of Happyness tells the story of a salesperson who spent a year homeless while trying to support himself and his young son. Will Smith took on the lead role in the movie while his real-life son Jaden Smith had his movie debut as his son Christopher Jr. The movie received mostly positive reviews from critics.
While the Oscars mostly ignored the movie, the Golden Globes nominated Smith for Best Actor and Seal for Best Original Song, while several critics groups named it among the best movies of the year. The box office proved how popular Smith and the movie's themes were, bringing in $307.1 million on a $55 million budget.
11 The Blind Side (2009) - $309.2 Million
Director John Lee Hancock might not be mentioned in the same breath as Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese, but he's the best at what he does. The writer-director makes mostly feel-good family-friendly dramas with dollops of sentimentality, and The Blind Side is the crown jewel in his filmography. The biopic follows Michael Oher, an American football player who overcomes a tough upbringing to play in the NFL.
There's nothing particularly special about the way it's shot, nor is it an ambitious story that spans decades like other biopics, but it somehow made over $300 million. That's a phenomenal success given its $29 million budget, and it massively overperformed in Warner Bros.'s eyes. It's one of the few movies that has ever earned more in its second weekend than opening weekend.
10 A Beautiful Mind (2001) - $316.7 Million
On the face of it, movies about mathematicians never sound like a good idea. They sound like they'd be too confusing and boring, but whether it's Good Will Hunting or Hidden Figures, they always end up being riveting, and always have great box office figures to boot, as those examples both earned around $230 million. A Beautiful Mind is the greatest example, which follows real-life Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash.
The movie begins with Nash as a student at Princeton, but it mostly focuses on his paranoid schizophrenia and how it affected the people close to him and his work. A Beautiful Mind has one of the biggest and earliest success stories for a biopic, as it made a huge splash at the box office and won four Academy Awards including Best Picture.
9 Green Book (2018) - $321.7 Million
Green Book is one of the biggest surprises of recent years, not because of how successful it was but because it came from director Peter Farrelly. The filmmaker is best known for raunchy comedies like Dumb and Dumber, Shallow Hal, and Hall Pass, but in 2018, he delivered the Best Picture-winning biopic about pianist Don Shirley.
The film follows Shirley (Mahershala Ali) as he's driven across a racist 1960s America by an Italian-American bouncer (Viggo Mortensen) for a North American tour. There was never any doubt that the movie was going to be a huge box office hit, as Ali and Mortensen have incredible chemistry, it's an irresistible feel-good film, and the look of the 1960s is so alluring. And it was all done with a shockingly low $23 million budget.
8 Schindler's List (1993) - $322.1 Million
Schindler's List's box office performance is hugely impressive not only because of how much money it made but because of how it had so much working against it. Firstly, except for the girl in the red coat, the movie is entirely black-and-white, and while that's a creative choice and adds to the aesthetic of the film, a lot of people simply don't like watching black-and-white movies.
Secondly, the biopic is three hours and 20 minutes long, meaning that movie theatres can't show it as many times per day as other films, which leads to fewer tickets getting sold. Not only that, but not many potential viewers wouldn't want to sit through a film that long, especially one so emotionally exhausting. But the 1993 movie overcame all of its setbacks, and it isn't all that much of a surprise considering it's considered one of the greatest movies of all time with a 9.0 on IMDb.
7 Catch Me If You Can (2002) - $352.1 Million
Spielberg is the master of biopics, as, along with Shindler's List, Catch Me If You Can is another movie that depicts the shocking life of a real-life figure. But nobody should bet against Spielberg when it comes to box office performance for any of his films, and while it is a biopic, Catch Me If You Can is almost as much of a globe-trotting adventure movie as the Indiana Jones movies.
The 2002 movie follows Frank Abagnale Jr., who became one of the world's best con artists before he even turned 18 and was chased around the world by the FBI. The movie made an astounding $352 million, but it might not have always turned out that way. The film was almost directed by David Fincher, and if that was the case, it would have been much darker in tone, and probably wouldn't have grossed anywhere near as much.
6 The Wolf Of Wall Street (2013) - $392 Million
The Martin Scorsese-directed The Wolf of Wall Street is one of the most entertaining biopics ever, as it follows crooked Wall Street broker Jordan Belfort, who spends his stolen millions having drug-fuelled parties in the sky. And for as outrageous and unbelievable as his actions are, it's one of the most historically accurate biopics. The movie is Scorsese's highest-grossing release ever, and it isn't even close.
Scorsese's movies have struggled to cross the $300 million mark in the past, as Shutter Island and The Departed both made just over $290 million but could quite get to 300. Interestingly, the movie opened at only number five on its opening weekend in North America. It opened behind The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Frozen, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, and American Hustle, the latter of which is ironic given that it's such a Scorsese-influenced movie. However, the Wolf of Wall Street and its ending had more staying power, as it made tens of millions more than both American Hustle and the Anchorman sequel.