Bob Dylan Biopic ‘A Complete Unknown’ Already Ranks Among the All-Time Top-Grossing Music Biopics: Here’s the Top 25

The Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown is off to a fast start at the boxoffice. The film has grossed $33.6 million worldwide since its release on Christmas Day, according to boxofficemojo.com. That enables it to place on our list of music biopics with the highest worldwide grosses.

Timothée Chalamet stars in the film, which follows Dylan from January 1961, when he moved from Minnesota to New York City, to July 1965, when he caused an uproar by playing (gasp) electronic instruments at the Newport Folk Festival. James Mangold, who directed the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, also did the honors here.

Mangold has directed three actors in Oscar-nominated performances – Angelina Jolie in her Oscar-winning role in Girl, Interrupted, Joaquin Phoenix in his Oscar-nominated role as Cash in Walk the Line and Reese Witherspoon in her Oscar-winning role as June Carter Cash in that same film. Chalamat and Edward Norton, who plays Pete Seeger in A Complete Unknown, may well join them when this year’s Oscar nods are announced on Jan. 17.

Here are the highest-grossing biopics of musicians in terms of worldwide box office. We didn’t include a few high-grossing films about real-life music personalities because they’re not biopics in the traditional sense. These include The Sound of Music (which tells the story of Maria von Trapp and the Trapp Family Singers); Green Book (which deals with a road trip taken by pianist and composer Don Shirley); Florence Foster Jenkins (about an heiress and hopelessly untalented soprano by that name); and Music of the Heart (about violinist and music educator Roberta Guaspari). Meryl Streep starred in the latter two films.

Here are the 26 biopics of music stars with the highest worldwide grosses.