The 10 Most-Anticipated Real-Life Stories That Will Unfold on the Screen This Year

Fans of The Crown will understand this: Sometimes the best TV shows come right out of history books. It’s nice to see the details behind the history of a family, like the royals who are often guarded and mysterious about their lives, played out on television for all of us to see. But it’s also incredibly frustrating for fact-checking journalists who know that these timelines are completely restructured. If you can get past the “based on a true story” caveat, then you’re all good.

Once you’ve come to peace with that, movies and TV based on real-life events are actually the best. You get to know about events only previously chronicled in a 15,000-word New Yorker article you never got around to reading, and you can do it in the comfort of the theater with a big bucket of popcorn on your lap—or, even better, your couch. Learning can be fun, kids.

But the stakes are high for real-life projects this year. If you’re the biggest Aretha Franklin fan, you’re looking forward to Jennifer Hudson's depiction of the legend in Respect. And Bowie fans will anxiously await the arrival of Stardust, starring Johnny Flynn as the man himself. Sure, you may have to wait a bit longer than expected for a few of these, but 2020 is still going to be a good year for biopics and real tales—so bring on the (sort of) true stories.