3. What’s the difference between a biopic and a historical drama?
The categories often blur into each other, but it’s really all about the main subject of the film. A biopic is about a person, while a historical drama is generally about an event or period in history.
So, to take a couple of recent examples, while Martin Scorsese’s The Killers Of The Flower Moon features real historical figures, it focuses on an event (the murders of the Osage tribe of Native Americans in 1920s Oklahoma) rather than any single life, and so is best described as a historical drama.
Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, on the other hand, is all about the the French leader’s rise to power, so most people would call it a biopic.
Equally Spike Lee’s Malcolm X (1992) is all about the life of the civil rights leader, and so is considered a biopic. Selma (2014) mainly focuses on the civil rights marches of the 1960s, and so some would argue it’s a historical drama.