If you’re thinking there’s been a lot of music biopics released in the past decade, you’re not alone. Depicting a famous artist at a tortured crossroads that comes to define their career has become a predictable play for Oscars glory, despite the fact that only two such actors – Rami Malek and his prosthetic Freddie Mercury teeth, and Jamie Foxx for his star turn as Ray Charles – have won the Best Actor gong this century.

Timothée Chalamet’s method approach to inhabiting the elusive Bob Dylan came up stumps at the Academy Awards this year, but the race is already very much on for 2026 with Deliver Me from Nowhere, which details the travails of one of rock’s literal endurance performers, Bruce Springsteen.

Any director seeking to effectively chronicle the life of a man who still performs intense, three-hour sets in his mid-70s would inevitably want to call Jeremy Allen White, who achieved fame by playing an extremely focused head chef on The Bear. White was only ever a flannel and a few singing lessons away from becoming The Boss, and has apparently received the tick of approval from the man himself (see the pair at left), who labelled White’s renditions of classics such as Born to Run “exciting”.

The film focuses on the making of Springsteen’s sixth album, Nebraska, recorded solo to four-track by The Boss in his New Jersey bedroom at a turning point in his career. Released in 1982, it’s widely considered to be one of the first successful DIY albums.

The movie also details Springsteen’s rise to success and the fraught relationship he had with his father, “Dutch”, which allows for a stupendous supporting cast that includes Succession’s Jeremy Strong as his manager, Jon Landau, podcaster Marc Maron as producer Chuck Plotkin, Adolescence’s Stephen Graham as his father and our very own Odessa Young as his fictional love interest. She plays Faye, a composite of women who interacted with Springsteen during this period. It’s a huge coup for the Sydney-born actor, who’s been appearing on stage and in films since she was 11, in what’s already a gigantic year for her, having starred opposite Jacob Elordi in the small-screen adaptation of Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

Directed by Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart), the film promises to run slightly shorter than a regular E Street Band gig at around two hours. Early glimpses show White exhibiting the variety of brooding expressions and rippling biceps that made him the obvious choice for a Calvin Klein underwear model as he hacks away at the album that will become the precursor to the wildly popular Born in the U.S.A. There’s an extended metaphor about Springsteen being a repairman, both in art and life, but, most importantly, there are telegraphs of the sort of charismatic lead performance that may just deliver this biopic into the upper echelons of Oscar history. At the very least, you’ll be able to sing along to the hits without someone filming it on their phone in front of you.

In cinemas from October 23.

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