The 33 greatest movies about showbiz

There’s no business like show business — and there’s no movie like a movie about the entertainment industry. Hollywood loves making films about itself, and luckily for audiences, a lot of those movies are pretty great.

Whether adapting the story of a famous event in the entertainment industry’s history, showcasing an exaggerated knowing parody of the business, or setting a genre like noir or horror in "Hollyweird", there are lots of ways for movies to show the fun side of show business. For close to a century now, Hollywood’s been interested in giving audiences a peek behind the curtain (and, frequently, itself a pat on the back), but there are also movies about Broadway, the music business, and more.

Here are 33 of the best showbiz movies of all time. Note that although many musician biopics deal with the business side of the movie industry, the music biopic is a subgenre worthy of a list all on its own, so you won’t find the likes of Elvis or Walk the Line here. What you will find, though, is a wide range of great films—many of which are, in fact, about great films.

33. Saturday Night

Year: 2024
Director: Jason Reitman

Your mileage may vary on Saturday Night, depending on how deserving you think SNL is of this hagiography. Regardless, the Jason Reitman comedy is a zippy, funny tour through the madcap nature of live television, taking place almost in real-time in the hours before the series premiere. An ensemble of performers doing uncannily great jobs playing comedy legends like Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith) and Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O'Brien) in their prime make Saturday Night into a charming (if exaggerated) trip down memory lane when the sketch show, an institution that’s been around for a half-century, was a new and risky showbiz venture.

32. The Substance

Year: 2024
Director: Coralie Fargeat

This Best Picture-nominated French body horror flick doesn’t accurately capture show business (there’s typically less gore, for starters), but there is a degree of truth amidst all the ick. An exceptional Demi Moore plays an aging star who, upon unceremoniously getting canned when she turns 50, starts using a black market drug that spawns a younger, "hotter" version of herself (Margaret Qualley). Problems arise when the two don’t want to share and begin using the titular Substance improperly. Grotesque and definitely not for everyone, The Substance is a thrilling and unique take on one of the ugly realities of the industry.

31. The Disaster Artist

Year: 2017
Director: James Franco

“Oh hai, Mark!” The thing about movies is that, well, anybody can make them. “Should they have?” is a whole other question. James Franco directs and stars in this comedy about the making of one of the worst films ever made, Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 (extremely) independent drama The Room. Wiseau, an exceptionally strange individual, partners with young, aspiring actor Greg Sestero (Dave Franco) to execute his grand vision of a feature film. It ends up being a success, though not at all in the way Wiseau intended. The Disaster Artist just goes to show that the classic Hollywood success story doesn’t always look how you’d expect.

30. Get Him to the Greek

Year: 2010
Director: Nicholas Stoller

A supporting character in the comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall, rock star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand), takes center stage in this spin-off—assuming he ever actually makes it to the famed Greek Theater for a comeback show. Jonah Hill stars as a record label employee tasked with escorting the erratic, not-especially-sober Aldous to the big show. Along the way, the pair learn some realities about the music industry, each other, and themselves. (The music isn’t half-bad, either!)

29. Trumbo

Year: 2015
Director: Jay Roach

Bryan Cranston stars as famed and irascible Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo in this biopic, which also serves as a pretty thorough overview of the Red Scare and the resulting Hollywood Blacklist. A talented and outspoken writer with a penchant for doing some of his best work in the bathtub, Trumbo finds himself at the intersection of art, business, and political power as he fights against the unethical blacklisting of himself and his colleagues for their supposed beliefs.

28. Argo

Year: 2012
Director: Ben Affleck

Argo takes one too many liberties with the truth to be a great movie, but star-director Ben Affleck’s adaptation of the true story of a CIA effort to get Americans out of Tehran during the real-life Iran hostage crisis by getting a fake film crew into the country is a memorable watch. The success of this plot relies on making sure the faux sci-fi production is as believable as possible, so agent Affleck’s Tony Mendez teams up with a real Hollywood producer (Alan Arkin). The spy caper side of Argo might actually be the weaker half, as watching th

27. Showgirls

Year: 1995
Director: Paul Verhoeven

Paul Verhoeven’s infamous erotic thriller, rated NC-17, was at one point considered to be one of the worst movies ever made. It has since enjoyed a reassessment and is now a beloved cult film—though there are still plenty of haters. Understandable! The story of an aspiring showgirl (Elizabeth Berkley) who is willing to do whatever it takes to rise to the top of the Las Vegas scene is inherently explicit and frankly kind of gross. But, it’s also a campy-yet-cutting indictment of show business and the American id at large.

26. King Kong

Year: 1933
Directors: Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack

The whole reason why King Kong climbed to the top of the Empire State Building was because Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) wanted to make a movie, bringing his beautiful, unknown starlet Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) to an exotic island where he could film some thrilling pictures. Of course, plans change when he encounters an even bigger star (literally) and attempts to take over Broadway by putting the Eighth Wonder of the World on the stage. The types of movies that Denham was making may be long out of vogue, and a giant gorilla is a thing of fancy, but King Kong nonetheless captures something evergreen in show business: The drive to get the next big thing.

25. MaXXXine

Year: 2024
Director: Ti West

All of the Mia Goth-led films in Ti West’s horror series, including X and Pearl, are about making movies and wanting to be a star of one form or another, but the trilogy capper, MaXXXine, is the most explicit about it. Set in a sleazy 1980s Hollywood, the movie follows Goth’s Maxine Minx, who, having survived the deadly events during the making of an adult film in the first movie, now has a chance to become a legitimate movie star. Leaning into exploitation tropes in a fun way, MaXXXine is a gnarly, earnest celebration of genre moviemaking.

24. Mank

Year: 2020
Director: David Fincher

David Fincher’s movie about the man who wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane isn’t as good as Orson Welles’ seminal film. No shame in that, as Citizen Kane is one of the greatest movies of all time, which still leaves Mank, named for writer Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman), plenty of room to be a good film. Carried by Oldman’s performance as the cranky screenwriter, Mank shows the unflattering work and deal-making that goes into making a movie. Granted, things have changed since the 1940s (and Fincher’s black-and-white film deliberately uses a lot of old filmmaking techniques to evoke the era), but there’s still a lot that’s the same about Hollywood sausage-making.

23. The Fall Guy

Year: 2024
Director: David Leitch

Director David Leitch got his start as a stunt double, so it’s only natural that he would want to make a movie celebrating one of the most undersung—and inherently dangerous—jobs in Hollywood. Ryan Gosling stars as a stuntman who, when working on a big sci-fi movie directed by his ex-girlfriend (Emily Blunt), uncovers a very real conspiracy theory that has him doing all those dangerous stunts when the cameras aren’t rolling and without a net. You’ll laugh and be wowed at the incredible achievements of stunt performers in this charming action comedy.

22. Birdman

Year: 2014
Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu

This Best Picture-winning comedy-drama, which is filmed in a style that makes all two hours of its runtime look like one continuous take, stars Michael Keaton as an actor trying to reinvent his career. In a deliberately meta bit of casting, Keaton’s Riggan Thomson played a superhero named Birdman in the ‘80s and ‘90s (a homage to his real-life escapades as Batman). Now, though, he’s trying to make it on the Broadway stage as a “serious” actor. However, there are a lot of problems along the way—especially a recurring hallucination of his superhero alter ego, begging him to return to blockbusters.

21. 8 ½

Year: 1963
Director: Federico Fellini

Italian director Federico Fellini’s avant-garde masterpiece is about the struggles of making a film. Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) is trying to make a sci-fi movie, but he has a debilitating case of writer’s block, and as a result, the whole production is stalled while he tries to work stuff out. Shot in gorgeous black and white, 8 ½ is an immensely influential film that explores the creative process and the all-too-porous lines between professionalism, creativity, and one’s own personal life.

20. That Thing You Do!

Year: 1996
Director: Tom Hanks

Tom Hanks’ absolutely charming directorial debut is a comedic look at the rise and fall of a one-hit wonder band in the ‘60s. The Oneders (pronounced “Wonders” even though everybody misreads it as “O'Neders”), are a young group of friends who record a song, “That Thing You Do,” and it becomes a sensational hit. They get a manager (Hanks) and are positioned for future success, if the realities of just a taste of fame don’t tear them apart first. Tom Everett Scott, Johnathon Schaech, Steve Zahn, Ethan Embry, and Liv Tyler also star.

19. The Producers

Year: 1967
Director: Mel Brooks

Show business is, well, a business, and as a result, there are some shady businessmen. The Producers, Mel Brooks’ directorial debut, stars Zero Mostel as a flailing Broadway producer who, after befriending an accountant (Gene Wilder), realizes he could make more money if a play flopped and they embezzled the funds. So, the pair set out to make the worst play of all time, a musical about Adolf Hitler. ("Springtime for Hitler and Germany/Winter for Poland and France.") Unfortunately for them, the play… is a hit, and now they’re on the hook for all their fraud.

18. Shadow of the Vampire

Year: 2000
Director: E. Elias Merhige

F. W. Murnau’s 1992 film Nosferatu is one of the enduring classics of the silent era, but this very meta 2000 movie tells the story of its filming with one major twist. In Shadow of the Vampire, Nosferatu actor Max Schreck is actually a real vampire (Willem Dafoe in an Oscar-nominated performance). Using silent film techniques that bring the time period to life (or undeath, as it were), Shadow of the Vampire is about the destructive, addicting drive to create. Murnau (John Malkovich) has a hunger to make his movie, which rivals Count Orlok’s hunger for blood.

17. You Ought to Be in Pictures

Year: 1940
Director: I. Freleng

Nearly 50 years before Who Framed Roger Rabbit (another exceptional showbiz movie), Looney Tunes blended live-action and animation for this acclaimed short. Daffy Duck wants to be the studio’s top dog, so he encourages Porky Pig to leave cartoons behind and try to make a career in feature films opposite Bette Davis. Porky and Daffy get into all sorts of hijinks on the real Warner Bros. studio lot and chat with real-life studio boss Leon Schlesinger in this hilarious (and impressive) look at the old Hollywood system.

16. A Star Is Born

Year: 2018
Director: Bradley Cooper

Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born is the fourth take on the story, and while the 1937, 1954, and 1976 versions all are good-to-great, it’s fitting that the most recent one would feel the most relevant to today’s entertainment landscape. Cooper plays Jackson Maine, a country rock singer with personal troubles who meets Ally, an unknown singer played by Lady Gaga. He quickly takes an interest in her, both as a musician and personally, and the two embark on a relationship while Ally becomes a rising star. All the while, Maine’s struggles haunt him. Cooper and Gaga are both exceptional in A Star Is Born (their duet of the song “Shallow" is an all-time movie music moment), and A Star Is Born is a beautiful, unflinching look at the rocky road to success.

15. Barton Fink

Year: 1991
Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen

Ask any writer, and they will tell you: Writing is awful. And yet, it’s a pretty important part of the creative process. The Coen Brothers’ early ‘90s black comedy Barton Fink is about the worst case of writer’s block. John Turturro plays the title role, a Broadway playwright who accepts a job writing movies in 1940s Hollywood—a task he thinks is beneath him. Madness ensues from there as he struggles to put anything to paper and makes an unwanted friend in his neighbor at the hotel he’s staying at, a boisterous but affable man played by John Goodman. A layered deconstruction of the concepts of high and low art, Barton Fink is one of the Coen Brothers’ most singular films—and that’s saying something.

14. Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Year: 1988
Director: Robert Zemeckis

A cartoonish take on a film noir (literally), Who Framed Roger Rabbit takes place in a ‘40s Hollywood where animated characters like Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, Woody Woodpecker, and many more, are working actors just like anyone else in Tinseltown. When one of the biggest toon stars, Roger Rabbit (Charles Fleischer), is accused of murder, it’s up to cynical private eye Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) to clear his name. The mystery and the antics are a hoot, but Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a highly animated (pun intended) depiction of show business.

13. The Player

Year: 1992
Director: Robert Altman

Tim Robbins stars as important Hollywood studio exec Griffin Mill in Robert Altman’s black comedy that’s seemingly exhausted by the very idea of show business while also being jam-packed with cameos that are references to the industry. When Griffin starts receiving threatening postcards in the mail, he assumes it’s from one of the many screenwriters he’s angered by rejecting their pitches. He takes action to confront his suspected harasser—but is he sure he’s got the right disgruntled writer? The Player is a darkly satirical look at Hollywood; the type of wryly cutting criticism that you can only do if you know and ultimately love the subject, as Altman clearly does.

12. Hail, Caesar!

Year: 2016
Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen

Josh Brolin plays a studio fixer tasked with doing whatever it takes to make sure Capitol Pictures’ scandals stay hidden and its stars stay in line in the Coen Brothers’ tale of 1950s Hollywood. Hail, Caesar! boasts an all-star cast, including George Clooney, Ralph Fiennes, Scarlett Johansson, Jonah Hill, and Channing Tatum—the last of whom gets to do a fun song and dance number dressed as a sailor. It’s a whip-smart, clever take on all the unseen, unglamorous work that goes into all of Hollywood’s glitz and glamor.

11. Bowfinger

Year: 1999
Director: Frank Oz

Few movies celebrate the scrappy, borderline unscrupulous side of Hollywood more than Bowfinger, which stars Steve Martin as Bobby Bowfinger, a low-rent B movie producer with a dream of making his own film one way or another. When he gets a chance to make a film and have a real, legitimate studio, he’s thrilled—except they will only support the movie if A-list star Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy) plays the lead role, and he refuses. What else is there for Bowfinger to do than to embark on his shoestring production anyway and film the movie around an unknowing, unconsenting Ramsey?

10. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood

Year: 2019
Director: Quentin Tarantino

A Hollywood fairy tale in the way that only Quentin Tarantino could pull off, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood is set in 1969, a pivotal time for the film industry and the American mood. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a fading star struggling to adapt to the imminent rise of New Hollywood, but at least he’s got his buddy and longtime stunt double (Brad Pitt) with him. Meanwhile, Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie playing the real-life actress) is enjoying success, but Charlie Manson and his murderous followers are waiting in the wings. A vibrant look at a changing time, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood also boasts a fantastically shocking ending.

9. Perfect Blue

Year: 1997
Director: Satoshi Kon

One of the most prescient movies ever made, the late, great anime director Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue follows Mima (Junko Iwao), a singer who quits the girl group she’s part of in an attempt to become an actress. However, she’s plagued with doubts that she’s making the right call, and she has way-too-devoted fans who are angry at her for ditching pop idoldom. The internet, which in the late ‘90s was a relatively new and not-yet-ubiquitous thing, further complicates things, leading to a terrifying blurring of reality. Perfect Blue is uncanny in how it predicts the ugliness of fan culture and the net’s impact on celebrity.

8. All About Eve

Year: 1950
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

The Best Picture winner at the 23rd Academy Awards, All About Eve is a tale about the ruthlessness of show business, starring Bette Davis as Margo Channing, an aging Broadway star, and Anne Baxter as the titular Eve, a young fan who worms her way into Margo’s life. It soon becomes apparent that Eve is more ambitious than her innocent demeanor would suggest. Regarded to be one of the great films, All About Eve is a delectable look at the cutthroat world of entertainment, with cutting dialog from Joseph L. Mankiewicz (younger brother of Citizen Kane scribe and Mank protagonist Herman J. Mankiewicz) to match.

7. All That Jazz

Year: 1979
Director: Bob Fosse

A thinly veiled and brutally honest self-portrait, Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz is inspired by his struggles staging a Broadway play while also trying to finish editing a movie—and how he was generally terrible to everybody in his life in the process. An atypical musical that will convert even those who proclaim to hate musicals, All That Jazz is a thrilling, entertaining, and unflinching look at the toils of talent and ego. Roy Scheider stars as Joe Gideon, the director-choreographer who is basically a stand-in for Fosse.

6. Tropic Thunder

Year: 2008
Director: Ben Stiller

On its face, a parody of the best war movies, Ben Stiller’s action comedy Tropic Thunder is really an explosive farce of the movie industry in general. Stiller plays an A-list actor who signs up for a star-studded war movie following an embarrassing, Oscar-chasing bomb. Once on location, though, he and his fellow stars find themselves in actual danger with an actual fight on their hands — one that their bigwig Hollywood agents (Tom Cruise in a hilariously against-type role) can’t fight for them.

5. Mulholland Drive

Year: 2001
Director: David Lynch

Another movie about making movies that’s widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time, David Lynch’s surrealist masterpiece is intentionally difficult to make total sense of. And yet despite (or, perhaps, because of) that fuzzy ambiguity, it perfectly encapsulates the bizarre dream that is showbiz. Naomi Watts stars as a naive young actress who comes to LA looking to make it big, only to encounter a mysterious amnesiac woman (Laura Harring). As the pair grows close while attempting to recover lost memories, sinister, confounding Hollywood forces begin to make themselves known.

4. Ed Wood

Year: 1994
Director: Tim Burton

And now for a change of pace: instead of one of the greatest movies ever made, how about a film about the director of some of the worst films ever made? Johnny Depp stars as Ed Wood, a filmmaker in the ‘50s known for sci-fi and horror films that were several letters of the alphabet below B movies in quality. And yet, despite how poor the final products like Plan 9 From Outer Space may have been (and they were very bad), Wood’s earnest creative drive and unique personality are a joy to behold, and Burton’s biopic is a celebration of the losers of showbiz rather than a mockery of them. Martin Landau won an Oscar for his role as Bela Lugosi, the Dracula actor who befriended Wood in his final years.

3. Sunset Boulevard

Year: 1950
Director: Billy Wilder

“Alright, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up." Gloria Swanson stars as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, one of the all-time great film noirs and Hollywood movies. When a struggling screenwriter (William Holden) encounters a reclusive, well past-her-prime star from the silent era, he realizes that feeding her delusions of a comeback could be his meal ticket. However, as is often the case in Hollywood, egos and jealousy make everything much more complicated.

2. Singin’ in the Rain

Year: 1952
Directors: Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen

A candy-colored delight of a film, Singin’ in the Rain documents the transition from the silent era to the rise of talkies — and the effect it had on the stars of the day — with the wit and grace that only Gene Kelly could pull off. Kelly, who choreographed the film in addition to directing and starring in it, plays silent star Don Lockwood. When the onset of sound threatens his career, he finds a solution thanks to a spirited, lovely young aspiring actress (Debbie Reynolds). It’ll take a little deception, a lot of laughs, and a ton of dancing. Singin’ in the Rain is Hollywood depicting itself in the brightest way possible, and it’s impossible not to smile as Kelly does indeed dance and sing in the rain.

1. Babylon

Year: 2022
Director: Damien Chazelle

On the one hand, it’s sacrilege to rank Babylon above Singin’ in the Rain when you talk about the best showbiz movies, seeing as Damien Chazelle’s cult classic, box office bomb of a masterpiece, is a hectic mirror of Singin’ in the Rain that goes so far as to reference the ‘52 film in its climax directly. On the other hand, Babylon is an absolute triumph that makes the silent era very, very loud. Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, and Diego Calva star as actors and a producer, respectively, in 1920s Hollywood when cinema was at its most hedonistic excess. You will never look at old movies the same way after seeing Babylon—nor will you ever look at an elephant the same, for reasons that will become clear minutes into this three-hour epic ode to films and the people who make them.