Jean MartinIn its eighth week at the box office, “Bob Marley: One Love” surpassed the Elton John biopic “Rocketman” to claim the fifth spot among the highest-grossing musician biopics in domestic box-office history.
The film, starring Kingsley Ben-Adir as reggae icon Bob Marley, has achieved significant success, grossing $607,000 in its latest week and totaling $96.6 million in the U.S. and Canada.
Bob Marley vs. Elton John:
While both Bob Marley and Elton John rose to global fame in the 1970s, their biopics portray contrasting narratives.
“Rocketman” celebrates Elton John’s triumph over personal struggles and his diverse career, while “Bob Marley: One Love” tells a sad tale of the reggae legend’s life and untimely death from skin cancer at the age of 36.
Top 25 Highest-Grossing Musician Biopics:
The list of highest-grossing musician biopics encompasses diverse musical genres, with pop/rock artists featuring prominently. R&B, rap, traditional pop, country, classical, Latin, contemporary Christian, and reggae musicians also have representation.
The methodology used to compile the list involved extracting biopics from boxofficemojo.com’s genre keywords and manually inserting some films not listed under “music.”
Excluded Films:
Certain high-grossing films about real-life music personalities were not included in the list due to their deviation from traditional biopic narratives.
Examples include “The Sound of Music,” “Green Book,” “Florence Foster Jenkins,” and “Music of the Heart,” which do not fit the criteria of portraying musicians’ life stories in the same manner as the films on the list.
