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Syndication: Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Rahul Malhotra from Collider:
…While the Bob Dylan biopic (A Compete Unknown) emerged as a sleeper hit only a year ago, the Bruce Springsteen movie has all but flopped.
Directed by James Mangold, A Complete Unknown opened to around $11 million at the domestic box office, and went on to gross $75 million in its lifetime run. It also earned eight Oscar nods, including in the Best Actor and Best Picture categories. However, Deliver Me From Nowhere only recently passed the $15 million mark domestically, after debuting with around $9 million. At the global box office, the movie is sitting at $30 million, $110 million less than A Complete Unknown ultimately grossed.
Directed by Scott Cooper, Deliver Me From Nowhere was produced on a reported budget of $55 million, while A Complete Unknown was said to have cost around $60 million to produce. While the Dylan biopic was a hit with critics and crowds — it’s sitting at a 95% audience score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes — the Springsteen biopic has seen its official RT score drop to 59%.
I can’t stand “The Boss” because he can’t sing, his music is terrible, and the E Street Band did the worst ZZ Top cover of all-time,* but putting personal bias aside for objective observation, who did they think was going to the movie theater to see this? All of Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuce’s fans are 50+ and they live in New Jersey or the Philadelphia region. There’s not a single person west of the Mississippi River who was excited about this. There are only so many John Clarks, Kevin Cooneys, and Zach Gelbs out there. Even if you got every sports writer on the planet to go see the Bruce movie, it would still have fewer viewers than The Russ Joy Show.
The other thing is that Jeremy Allen White isn’t a 1A superstar on the big screen. Great job in The Bear, but not exactly Hollywood royalty just yet. The Collider article correctly points out that they had Timothée Chalamet for the Bob Dylan biopic, and he’s done stuff like Dune and Wonka and Little Women.
Plus, biopics are old hat. They just aren’t very exciting to begin with, and there have been too many of them in recent years. Biopics are kind of like craft breweries in 2025. At some point, the saturation is too much and the bubble bursts. We can’t have 17 breweries within a 15-mile radius making run-of-the-mill IPA that tastes like liquefied pine tree. That’s what Springsteen is anyway. He’s the IPA of music. You only consume it if you despise yourself and want your head to hurt.
Sidenote: I hate the fact that I’m even bringing this up, but I feel like it has to be mentioned. Every time we write something about Springstreen, there are people in the comments talking about how he became “woke.” It’s definitely a thing. I wonder how many people were Bruce fans back in the day and then gave up on him because of politics. Anyhow! Have a great day.
EDIT – There are Bruuuuuuuuce fans in the comments saying that the reason the movie is flopping is because it’s focused on the Nebraska era. This is gaslighting. To be 100% clear, there is no era of Bruce’s music that is worth listening to, or making a film about.
*
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team’s 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University.
email – k.kinkead@sportradar.com
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