5 Legendary Rock Bands That Deserve A Biopic Before Bon Jovi

In early 2026, Universal greenlit a Bon Jovi biopic/band movie/project-a-ma-bob, allegedly batting away other studios interested in the deal to come away with the prize, along with the rights to paw through its catalog for the soundtrack. Jon Bon Jovi himself was given a hand in the film, with the scriptwriter being Cody Brotter, whose other work includes movies about cryptocurrency, OxyContin, and the Drudge Report. As of March 2026, the title is unconfirmed, but there's a small, small chance the film won't be called "Livin' on a Prayer."

Biopics are hard to get right, more so when there are several central characters to explore, and even more so when most major rock bands seem to follow a similar trajectory of scrappy underdog achieves megastardom, followed by internal strife and a Vegas residency. And with only a little disrespect meant to Bon Jovi, aren't there better options for rock bands to get the film treatment out there? We think yes, and so here is our semi-unofficial pitch deck for the suits at Universal.

Fleetwood Mac seems like the obvious choice for a biopic. Sure, there are challenges — say, the impossibility of casting Stevie Nicks with anyone other than a young clone of Stevie Nicks — but the band still has an engaged fanbase, and a soundtrack with fresh recordings of some of its best-loved songs would get data-center-melting streaming traffic. From a screenwriting perspective, the drama, broken hearts, and ultimate rancor between the band members would fill pages almost as fast as the human hand could type.

Consider this: a film called "Tusk," after the band's weird, critically panned 1979 album that seems to have driven nearly every member of the band to distraction, focusing on the creation of that strange farewell double-disc. By the time "Tusk" was recorded, the band members had a lot of history with each other, and even though they'd had a runaway success with "Rumours" a few years ago, the music industry was changing beneath them. Furthermore, they increasingly couldn't stand each other; the members would soon bolt for solo projects, reuniting only intermittently in later years. 

Watching the unraveling of Fleetwood Mac wouldn't be easy, but it would be riveting, and it would do more to explore the characters of the band's members and the legacy of their music than a sunnier slice of time would.

Both fans and members of Metallica have pooh-poohed the idea of a biopic of the metal gods. Lars Ulrich, though he abstractly liked the idea of seeing the group's exploits on the silver screen, noted that it would be hard to tell their story without referencing other people who might have a less let-it-all-hang-out attitude. (He also dreamcast James Spader as himself.) Fan chatter on Reddit is more straightforward: Metallica's ride-or-die fans are not interested in seeing a sanitized version of the band's early years and cast doubt on the possibility of telling four stories, those of each member of the band, within the standard running time of even an ambitiously long feature.

But if the band doesn't sign off, there's always parody. Write a screenplay called "Something Else Matters" about a metal band called Aluminimayhem that ditches its rebel image for alternative rock and goes square. It's a natural fit for a humor script, and who knows? It might inspire Metallica to go back to its old days singing about Cthulhu to rebuild some cred. 

Judas Priest has recently been the topic of a well-reviewed major documentary, "The Ballad of Judas Priest," directed by Rage Against the Machine front man Tom Morello. A biopic is a different animal, though, and Rob Halford is on board with the idea, telling Stuff in a 2019 interview that the band's story, complete with what Halford tastefully calls "a lot of incidents on the road," had the makings of a film.

No story about Judas Priest could dodge the captivating story of Halford's homosexuality, which he has concealed and then celebrated at different stages of his career. (If you've ever wondered about the fashion overlap between metalheads and gay dudes, he's your answer.) Halford's queerness never kept him from rocking, though the alcohol he misused to manage his feelings about his identity almost did. Though it would have to be a Halford-forward movie, since he wasn't actively with Judas Priest when he came out, a clever script could center on the 48 hours after Halford's apparently impulsive 1998 announcement that he was gay. Such a film could dramatize a turning point in his life, while showing the charismatic front man at a moment of crisis and vulnerability.

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As millennials begin to crest 40 and begin the slow slide of turning into their parents, the nostalgia horizon creeps ever forward. The kids who loved No Doubt when it first came out are now getting their first mammograms and prostate exams: If you remember "Tragic Kingdom," it's almost time for a colonoscopy, but it's also time for a No Doubt biopic.

The ingredients are all there. Gwen Stefani's co-vocalist, the electric and crowd-pleasing John Spence, died early in the band's career, but his crushed friends carried on the project. Stefani and bassist Tony Kanal's relationship crumbled, yet the band still kept going. Gwen Stefani's brother, Eric Stefani, left to concentrate on his "side gig" drawing for "The Simpsons," and the band was shunted from label to label. And then "Tragic Kingdom" came out and blew the charts wide open, making the wierdos from Anaheim rock royalty. For audiences, it seemed like it happened overnight; a movie could show us the nine years leading up to that "sudden" success. 

Nirvana has inspired an enormous amount of media, but it's never quite gotten a true biopic. Documentaries galore have come out about the band and its members, including the notorious "Kurt & Courtney," which stirred up lazy conspiracies about front man Kurt Cobain's death and the rumors of his wife Courtney Love's responsibility. Experiences like this are why a biopic is unlikely to come out while Love or any key members of Nirvana are still alive: Love is the executrix of Cobain's estate, she's been burned before, and she and Dave Grohl have a somewhat difficult relationship. It's vanishingly difficult to imagine all the moving parts aligning to get the needed permissions, and then to make something actually good.

But let's play for a minute. You cannot cast a known quantity as Cobain (and maybe not even as Love), and the excitement that would come from watching an unknown step into the grimy Converse shoes of the late, lamented king of grunge could suffuse the whole movie, if done well. Cobain died young, which means everything he did, he did young: made art, found fame, married, had a baby, struggled, and despaired. Now that Nirvana's original fans are older than Cobain ever got to be, a film that emphasizes his youth could be a triumph.