20 Movies That Took HUGE Risks (And NAILED It)

The overwhelming majority of musician biopics don't do anything particularly innovative because there's a clear formula that connects with audiences - telling a rags-to-riches tale packed with euphoric highs and dramatic lows, hopefully aided by a well-cast lead who successfully embodies the real-life figure.

And then there's the Robbie Williams biopic Better Man.

Because it apparently wasn't enough of a marketing challenge that Williams isn't particularly well known outside of Europe, filmmaker Michael Gracey decided to represent Williams throughout the film as a CGI chimpanzee.

This was intended to reflect Williams' own perception of himself as an unevolved "performing monkey," but it also caused the film's budget to skyrocket to an eye-watering $110 million.

And though Better Man was quite predictably a box office flop with its wild concept simply being too weird for mainstream tastes, it is on its own merits an incredibly fearless piece of work that totally blows the conventions of the music biopic wide open.

Its commercial failure probably means we won't see another biopic like this anytime soon, but we should just be glad that it exists at all.