If you walked into a movie theater in the last five years, you were likely greeted by the polished spandex of wrestling biopics, the gritty rockstar rise of hair-metal legends, or the dusty, sepia-toned nostalgia of the 1970s. But a new trend is bubbling up in development slates across Hollywood, and it doesn’t involve famous musicians, sports icons, or war heroes.
Studios are now acquiring scripts that function as "biopics" not of celebrities, but of writers' parents, neighbors, and childhood selves. These films promise a different kind of recognition: the gasp of seeing your own childhood kitchen replicated on screen.
Whether it is a story about a father losing his job at a manufacturing plant in 1994, or a mother navigating the PTA politics of 1997, the 90s middle class biopic is set to be the genre that reminds us that everyone has a story worth telling—even if it’s just about growing up on Maple Street.
For years, the biopic genre has been dominated by the "Great Man" (or Woman) theory—films like Bohemian Rhapsody , Rocketman , and The Iron Lady . However, the critical success of films like The Fabelmans and the viral nature of coming-of-age dramedies like Dìdi has proven that audiences are craving specificity over spectacle.