Like I said in my post yesterday, the CinemaStickler Top 5s have expanded into Top 10. For my first post, I will be looking at ten people who are in desperate need of a biopic. Hollywood has been obsessing over biopics recently. In 2014 alone, we saw Alan Turing, Martin Luther King Jr., Chris Kyle, and Stephen Hawking all get movies showing their struggles in life and everything they overcame to become the historical giants they are today. With another group of biopics staged to come out in 2015 and 2016, here is a list of 10 people that would have great biopics:
10. Steve Irwin
Lead Actor: Russell Crowe
Okay, so this is actually the worst actor comparison that I have on the list so don’t worry. Unlike many of the biopics coming out today that are intense dramas, this would be an interesting take on the genre as a whole. This fun movie would start right before the breakthrough success of The Crocodile Hunter TV show and end at his tragic death while filming in the Great Barrier Reef. Crowe was interested in portraying Irwin back in 2006 shortly after his death was announced; however, those plans never came to fruition. Tack on Amy Adams as his wife Terri Irwin and you have yourself a movie. While some of the other movies on this list will be darker, this would be a fun biopic that everybody could enjoy.
#9: D.B. Cooper
Lead Actor: John Hamm
Up until the series finale of Mad Men, there was actually a large theory that Don Drapper would turn out to be the infamous, mysterious D.B. Cooper (read more on that here: http://dailym.ai/1ErVpXY). While not much is known about the secretive man who hijacked a plane, took ransom money, and jumped out of it with a parachute somewhere over Washington state, psychologists have been able to create a general sort of idea of how he acted based on his actions. While this movie would also not be the typical biopic (because the majority of it is based on speculation), you can’t tell me that you wouldn’t want to line up to see this movie.
#8: C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien
Lead Actors: (old version) Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen; (young version): Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Marc Evan Jackson
Sorry about the photo clutter, but I think all four of these actors would do a tremendous job of portraying the famous writing duo whose history goes all the way back to World War I. Some of the greatest writings of the 20th century came from these two friends who found it harder and harder to stay close as they became more popular in the world. The movie would span from their time in the Great War until their deaths decades later while focusing on one of the most powerful friendships of the last 100 years.
#7: Julius & Ethel Rosenberg
Lead Actors: Scoot McNairy & Meryl Streep
Okay so I admit that these are two very different actors. McNairy played roles in Argo and 12 Years a Slave but has nowhere near the credentials as three-time Oscar-winner Streep. Despite the near 30-year age difference between the actors, a combination of makeup and their superb acting skills could bring to life the infamous couple sentenced to death via electric chair after allegedly giving American nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union and launching the Red Scare in the 1950s. The movie would definitely be a controversial one because of some questions of surrounding the trial, and the director would have to find the perfect balance between creating large-scale sympathy for the couple accused of treason and not making them look like stone-cold traitors. It is definitely a major historical event missing from the archives of Hollywood, and these two, with the right script, could remedy that.
#6: Upton Sinclair
Lead actor: Bradley Cooper
I was honestly stunned when I learned the author of The Jungle had never had a serious movie made about him. The investigative journalism required from Sinclair when writing the book exposing the horrors of the 1906 Chicago meatpacking industry is the reason behind the creation of the FDA and increased food safety regulations. Cooper has already proven that he is no longer Hollywood’s sexy, funny guy and can play a dramatic role in American Sniper. This would be another great addition to his already prestigious acting resume. Upton Sinclair deserves a movie for everything he accomplished and Cooper would be the perfect man to get the job done.
#5: Marie Curie
Lead Actress: Marion Cotillard
These pictures don’t do justice to the two amazing French women, but this would totally work out. Cotillard has proven time and again that she is an amazing actress who can nail just about anything given to her (okay, we’ll give her a pass on The Dark Knight Rises). The groundbreaking scientist and first women to win a Nobel Prize and the only one to win it twice deserves to have a movie that follows her astounding life passing milestone after milestone. Curie was a pioneer in the radioactivity branch of science and gave her life for it when she died of radiation poisoning (her coffin is coated in four inches of lead because her body is that radioactive). After winning an Oscar and being nominated for another one last year, Cotillard is poised for a breakout role to cement her legacy. This could be that movie.
#4: Tupac Shakur
Lead Actor: Michael B. Jordan
There have been rumors and rumblings of a Tupac movie circling around for almost 10 years now, but it is time to do the man justice and create a major-hit with his own movie. There couldn’t be a more perfect man for the role than Michael B. Jordan. He is slowly on the upswing, make sure to check out his performance as the Human Torch in Fantastic Four this summer, and looks just like the legendary rapper from the 1990s. Given all that is going on in the country right now, hopefully a movie about Tupac’s rise to success and difficulties will show everybody that we aren’t so different after all. This has the potential to be a great movie, so reach out to director Lee Daniels and make this happen.
#3: Kurt Cobain
Lead Actor: Jared Leto
At number three on the list, we have another musical icon that has never had a great movie in his honor. Despite a few direct-to-TV Lifetime Movies, Cobain has never been given the proper recognition with a big-time biopic. The movie would focus on Cobain’s rise to fame with Nirvana and the issues he has with handling fame, drugs, and his strained relationship with Courtney Love leading up to his tragic suicide. Yes, Jared Leto cut his hair for his role as The Joker in Suicide Squad, but, in the word’s of every parent out there, “it will grow back.” After already dressing as Cobain in a 2011 music video, Leto has proven he has what it takes to both look like and act like the Nirvana front man.
#2: Heath Ledger
Lead Actor: Joseph Gordon-Levitt
In case you didn’t get it, Joseph Gordon-Levitt looks exactly like Heath Ledger! I can already see how this movie would play out. Starting shortly after the Australian actor burst onto the scene with Brokeback Mountain, the movie would primarily focus on his training to play The Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. We would watch Ledger dedicate himself to the role that, literally, drove him insane. The craziest part about the actor from down-under is that almost every director who worked with him said that The Joker was only the tip of the iceberg and that he had the potential to go down in history as one of the best actors of all-time, with a lot of people comparing his talent to that of cinema great Marlon Brando. It would be a much darker movie than many of the other ones on this list. After filming concluded, Ledger averaged 2 hours of restless sleep per night and never slept more than four-and-a-half hours. He constantly complained about images inside his head and would even have screaming fits in his sleep. It would be a huge, difficult step for Gordon-Levitt (whose acting career seems to temporarily plateaued), but successfully mastering Ledger and his accent could propel him back into stardom and would definitely earn him some attention from the Academy Awards.
Honorable Mention
John McCain (young): Guy Pearce
Gloria Steinem: Hilary Swank
Ted Bundy: Greg Kinnear
#1: Sir Christopher Lee
Lead Actor: (old) Frank Lanella; (young) Christpher Eccleston
Christopher Lee is one of the most interesting human beings…EVER! Aside from being a critically acclaimed actor, this knighted man was part of a British special forces regiment that hunted Nazis in WWII, met the men who killed Rasputin, is related to both Civil War general Robert E. Lee and King Charlemagne, is a renowned opera singer, at 6’5 he is the tallest lead actor in Hollywood history, and was the only member of the Lord of the Rings cast to have actually met J.R.R. Tolkien. On top of that, he was just awarded the Spirit of Metal for his recent death-metal album he released last year…at age 94. Also, James Bond author Ian Fleming (Lee’s cousin) said that he based Bond on Christopher Lee after working with him in the British Royal Air Force and seeing just how lethal he can be. While filming Return of the King, director Peter Jackson said that he wanted a scene where Saruman was stabbed in the back by Wormtongue and Saruman screams in pain. Lee corrected Jackson by saying that people who are stabbed in the back don’t make any noise (because it collapses their lungs). When Jackson asked how he knew that, Lee said, “personal experience” and described one of his many adventures in the British Secret Service in vague detail (because none of his missions have been declassified after 60+ years). Still don’t think this guy deserves his own movie? He has done everything under the sun and I would move Heaven and Earth to see a movie detailing it.
Who do you think should have their own biopic? Comment and let me know what you think.
CinemaStickler 