Movie based on songs

[Mike]

I Can Only Imagine is in theaters.

My wife and I were trying to think of other feature films based on songs. We came up with three more.

How many do you have off the top of your head? White text them below and see how many we get.

Don't bother cheating and going to the Wikipedia list. I did that, and it's not at all satisfying.

[Tahlvin]

[Phoebe]

If this is from the podcast I only got As far as the self-driving cars and then had to turn it off. . Hope to catch up later but in the meantime what does this mean? Movies that are organized around the songs within them which lend structure to the plot, such as Purple Rain? Or movies that were inspired by one particular song and then tried to generate a whole movie storyline around whatever was originally in the song?

[Mike]

The second thing. Like you have a hit song and someone says, "That'd make a great movie." So they adapt it.

[Kyle]

I can only think of a TV show:



Also, I think this movie fits the category, but I've never seen it, so I don't know. Also, I think it's based on a bunch of songs:



Now, a more interesting discussion would be, what songs would you like to see movies based on? Easy: Jamie's Got a Gun. They already made a short film about it.

[Eliahad]

Of course, I don't know if any of those actually follow the plot of the songs.

[Zen]

[Mike]

Kyle, yours was a movie before it was a TV show.

My wife and Yancey both said .

The only other one I thought of was .

[akiva]

I thought the song was written for the movie, in which case the movie isn't based on it. Am I wrong about that?

[Zen]

[Mike]

Then I only had two.

[poorpete]

Definitely right with .

I don't think the others by this band count. Right, your saying as if the song was the pitch for the film?

You have all forgotten !

Hold tight, and then I guess coooooould count but probably not in spirit of the list.

[poorpete]

was made 4 years after the song, but even though I'm sure there's a love story, they gave the title character to a dog! Doesn't count.

The first few minutes of plays like the plot of the song. I know, doesn't count either.

For TV specials, there is and .

[akiva]

The song played a huge role in the movie, but the plot wasn't based on the song at all.

[Mike]

[Kyle]

Ooooooo. That's a good one, Mike.

[Zen]

probably doesn't count, since the entire album was pretty much just the soundtrack for the movie, right? (And, as far as songs go, would make a better movie... but the rating would probably be ... would make a good one too...)

[poorpete]

Wikipedia says of that is "provided the basis for both her autobiography and a movie on her life."
Changing my mind. It counts!

Biopics are difficult. Like, , is definitely a song of redemption/settling-down with his wife, which is the last half of the film, but I dunno. I feel it's more like, what would be a good name for a biopic, either that or , but the story would essentially be the same with either song as the title. Anyways, the true basis of the movie is .

[DMDarcs]

I think counts.

[Phoebe]

I started down this road by thinking about Christmas songs because there are a thousand s*** movies based on lyrics of Christmas songs. I don't know how intimately connected the movie and song have to be. But at least there is some inspirational relationship, however poor:


Then I started thinking about songs I used to sing to my kids apart from Christmas, which yields:


And then just trying to think of classic songs that might have spawned a movie along the way:


Elvis movies are a big puzzler because in most cases the song is written for the movie and the movie is a vehicle for the song, but there might be some where the song came first or was a song Elvis was covering anyway. ???