10 Movie Biopics That Desperately Need To Happen
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Biopics always provide fertile ground for stories. It’s been said many times that life is stranger than fiction, and this goes double for those with the most eccentric lives.
Musical biopics are having a rebirth of late; Walk The Line’s shadow was long and dark, but recently with the success of Bohemian Rhapsody and heavy promotion of the ‘true fantasy’ Rocketman, they’re back in vogue.
As well as musicians though, there are plenty of other famous figures who’ve either passed away recently or haven’t been with us for a while and still haven’t had their stories told. Astronauts, actors and amazing minds all make the cut here.
Biopics have to do a tricky job of being honest yet entertaining, appealing to fans without sugarcoating and distilling a lifetime of achievements into a couple of hours.
Some of these stars have fascinating stories just waiting to be told, others have tales where the public have barely scratched the surface. There’s even a few where the live and times of the star are well known, but marred in controversy and intrigue all the same; after all, it’s the way you tell them.
10. Sally Ride
Fantasy Casting: Hayley Atwell
Not just a name after Wheel Of Fortune in the Billy Joel classic We Didn’t Start The Fire, Sally Ride was the first American woman in space and to date is the youngest astronaut ever, as well as the lead investigator into both Challenger and Colombia.
The two previous women, Valentina Tereshkova and Svetlana Savitskaya, each have compelling stories of lives in patriarchal Soviet Russia, but the American centric Hollywis far more likely to focus on Ride.
Nothing should be taken away from her either; her narrative is fascinating and offers a Social Network like movie which goes deeper than the base storyline.
Though she was married between 1982-87 to fellow astronaut Steve Hawley, it was revealed after her death in 2012 that she’d been in a secret lesbian relationship for 27 years with Tam O’Shaughnessy, a science professor and author.
To have reached one of the pinnacles of human achievement and still have to hide the most basic thing about yourself is a damning indictment of humanity’s priorities.
So long as Atwell can do Ride’s California accent, she’s a great fit. Atwell is an accomplished actress with plenty of experience playing female characters having to survive in a man’s world.