The Unbelievable True Stories Behind 25 of This Year's Biggest Movies

WWE fans, this one is for you. Dwayne Johnson produced Fighting With My Family, an ode to wrestling which is based on the 2012 documentary The Wrestlers: Fighting With My Family. The film tells the true story of WWE star Paige, who comes from a family of wrestlers. Florence Pugh, Jack Lowden, Nick Frost, Vince Vaughn, and Lena Headey all star. Johnson also appears in the film as himself, aka The Rock.

Release date: Mar. 1

Metal band Mötley Crüe got the biopic treatment in this Netflix film that tracks their rise from members of the Los Angeles music scene to certified '80s icons. The Dirt stars Machine Gun Kelly, Pete Davidson, and Game of Thrones star Iwan Rheon.

Release date: Mar. 22

Taraji P. Henson and Sam Rockwell star in The Best of Enemies, a film about the unlikely alliance that formed between black activist Ann Atwater and Ku Klux Klan member Claiborne Paul Ellis when they were both placed on a committee to oversee the desegregation of schools in Durham, NC in the 1960s. When the two were forced to work together, they discovered that they actually shared some of the same values, at least when it came to their children.

Release date: Apr. 5

Based on the Joyce Smith book The Impossible, Breakthrough is a faith-based film starring This Is Us favorite Chrissy Metz and Topher Grace. The movie tells the true story of Smith's son, who fell through some ice and was declared legally dead. One hour later, the basketball-loving teen was revived after his mother prayed over him.

Release date: Apr. 12

One of the most celebrated literary figures of our time never existed at all. J.T. LeRoy is the wild true story of a woman named Savannah Knoop who posed as the titular author at the urging of her sister-in-law. In truth, LeRoy was always fictitious — he was nothing more than the pen name of Knoop's sister-in-law, but for a time, members of the Hollywood and fashion elite became enamored with the mercurial figure they knew only as J.T. LeRoy. The film stars Kristen Stewart and Laura Dern.

Release date: Apr. 26

Netflix snatched up the rights to the controversial Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile shortly after it made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival. The film stars Zac Efron as the infamous serial killer Ted Bundy, and chronicles his crimes, arrest, escape, and trial. Early reviews suggest this could be a standout performance for Efron, who is leaving his teen comedy days firmly behind him with this challenging and thoroughly unsettling role.

Release date: May 3

J. R. R. Tolkien is one of the most famous names in fantasy literature thanks to his astonishing The Lord of the Rings trilogy and its prequel The Hobbit. Now it's time for the author himself to take center stage in an upcoming film simply titled Tolkien. Starring Nicholas Hoult, the movie follows Tolkien from his school days, where he formed unbreakable friendships with a group of fellow students to the role World War I played in shaping his writing. This period piece is set to give us an inside look into the man behind the books.

Release date: May 10

Directed by Dexter Fletcher, Rocketman is an Elton John biopic that will mix fantasy-music sequences with the true story of the legendary singer. The film stars Taron Egerton, Jamie Bell, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Richard Madden. The first trailer for Rocketman teases, "There are moments in a rock star's life that define who he is. Where there was darkness there is no you, and it's going to be a wild ride."

Release date: May 31

Based on "an actual lie" from the family of writer and director Lulu Wang, this indie film tells the story of Billi (played by Awkwafina), a young woman born in China but raised in the US, and her discovery that her grandmother Nai Nai has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Nai Nai has been given a short time to live, but her family decides not to tell her that she's dying: instead, they throw an impromptu wedding to unite their scattered family members and reconnect with her before she passes.

Release date: July 12

Ford vs. Ferrari is set to dramatize one of the most exciting and ambitious automobile races in history. Henry Ford II contracted a team of engineers led by Carroll Shelby to build a totally new car capable of beating the Ferrari in the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans race in France. The story is one of ingenuity and daring that's sure to feature plenty of action. The film stars Matt Damon, Christian Bale, and Caitriona Balfe.

Release date: Nov. 15

As is often the case with Quentin Tarantino films, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood will be a marriage of fact and fiction. The film is set in '60s-era Hollywood, and will hone in on the story of a struggling actor while real-life figures — including Sharon Tate, Steve McQueen, and Charles Manson — appear in the periphery. The star-studded cast includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, and Al Pacino.

Release date: July 26

The life of Judy Garland takes center stage in the upcoming biopic Judy, starring Renée Zellweger as the famed singer and actor. More specifically, the movie will hone in on her arrival in London for a series of sold-out concerts in the 1960s. The film is an adaptation of the award-winning play End of the Rainbow.

Release date: Sept. 27

Based on the Esquire article by Tom Junod, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood tells the story of Mr. Rogers and how he changed the cynical Lloyd Vogel's mind simply by being his kind self. Tom Hanks is set to play Mr. Rogers, while Matthew Rhys will play Vogel, the journalist based on Junod.

Release date: Nov. 28

Directed by Roland Emmerich, Midway is a war film set against the backdrop of the Battle of Midway during World War II, which previously served as the subject for the 1976 film of the same name starring Henry Fonda. This time around, the movie stars Nick Jonas, Woody Harrelson, Luke Evans, and Mandy Moore.

Release date: Nov. 8

The Netflix comedy based on the real life actor Rudy Ray Moore (played by Eddie Murphy in the film), who got his big break in the '70s when he decided to create an outrageous onstage alter ego — Dolemite — to put an end to his long string of failures in show business (singing, stand-up comedy, etc.). The creation of his obscene pimp character eventually led him to cross paths with pretentious and skeptical director D'Urville Martin (Wesley Snipes), who agreed to helm his movie. Against all odds, Moore's Dolemite became a box-office smash and one of the most memorable films from the '70s blaxploitation era.

Release date: Sept. 7

Mark Ruffalo and Anne Hathaway are bringing an important true story to the big screen in their thriller Dark Waters, which is based on the 2016 article "The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare" by Nathaniel Rich, published in The New York Times Magazine. The film follows a tenacious attorney (Ruffalo) who manages to connect a number of unexplained deaths to one of the world's biggest corporations, and the lengths the company is willing to go to keep it all a secret. As he attempts to expose the truth, he puts everything at risk — his career, his family, and even his own life.

Release date: Nov. 22

Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones star in this film inspired by true events, tracing the real-life tale of an ambitious pair of Victorian-era adventurers who rode a hot-air balloon all the way into the stratosphere in the year 1862.

Release date: Dec. 6

Famed western figures Billy the Kid and sheriff Pat Garrett figure into The Kid, a semi-biographical movie about a young man trying to rescue his sister from his uncle in the wild west. Watch out for an unexpected villainous turn from a grizzled Chris Pratt as the nefarious uncle with a grudge.

Release date: Mar. 8

In 2008, the Lashkar-e-Taiba stormed the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, and a brave chef teamed with a kitchen worker to help save as many people as possible. The movie dramatizes their heroic actions and the terror of the attack in Hotel Mumbai, starring Dev Patel and Armie Hammer.

Release date: Mar. 29

The real-life hostage situation that led to the psychological term Stockholm syndrome gets the Hollywood treatment in Stockholm. The movie stars Ethan Hawke as Lars Nystrom, the man who took a bank full of people hostage in hopes of getting his partner released from prison, and Noomi Rapace as the hostage who feels drawn to her captor.

Release date: Apr. 12

The scheme at the center of Jennifer Lopez's Hustlers is based on Jessica Pressler's December 2015 article "The Hustlers at Scores" for New York magazine. In June 2014, four women and one man were indicted for allegedly drugging men and then using their credit cards at the hottest night clubs in New York. That outrageous but totally true story inspired the film, starring Lopez, Constance Wu, Cardi B, and Lili Reinhart.

Release date: Sept. 13

Famed abolitionist Harriet Tubman's harrowing journey from slave to Underground Railroad liberator forms the basis of Harriet. The biographical film stars Cynthia Erivo as Tubman.

Release date: Nov. 1

Martin Scorsese's The Irishman is based on a true story — well, one man's version of the truth, anyway. The movie chronicles the wild true story of truck driver Frank Sheeran, who claims to know the circumstances surrounding Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance. His story has largely been discredited by the FBI, but it still makes for one fascinating movie.

Release date: Nov. 27

Former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes's alleged sexual harassment of the network's female staffers is dramatized in Bombshell. The #MeToo era movie has an all-star cast that includes Charlize Theron, Margot Robbie, and Nicole Kidman.

Release date: Dec. 13

Just Mercy, starring Michael B. Jordan, is based on Bryan Stevenson's memoir of the same name that chronicles his dedication to defending Walter McMillian, a man who was wrongly imprisoned for murdering a white woman. The movie focuses on the racism and inadequacies in the legal system that plagued the case from the start.

Release date: Dec. 25