Hugh Jackman's 2025 Music Biopic Is Taking Over Netflix's Charts
by Jeremy Mathai · /FilmA star-driven adult drama that's based on a true story and isn't a traditional biopic? In this economy? There's an entire cottage industry built around movies like "Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere" or "A Complete Unknown," made for the express purpose of wowing Academy voters, courting older moviegoers nostalgic for the music of their youth, and fending off accusations that Jake Kasdan's satirical "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" should've killed this genre dead. In that light, a lot of Oscars viewers may have been somewhat surprised to see Kate Hudson's name pop up in the Best Actress race, and doubly so that it was for her performance in "Song Sung Blue."
The Craig Brewer-directed film may not have made a ton of ripples at the box office upon release in late 2025, but it was probably only a matter of time before audiences caught up with the unexpectedly emotional arc at the heart of this real-life tale. Starring Hudson and Hugh Jackman as two diehard Neil Diamond fans, the story follows musicians and lovers Mike Sardina and Claire Stengl from their humble beginnings as struggling artists to becoming two of the most successful and famous performers of any cover band in the American heartland throughout the 1980s and '90s. It's a true rags-to-riches tale in every sense of the phrase, with a few larger-than-life twists thrown in for good measure.
Based on the very real (and very dramatic) lives of its two central figures, "Song Sung Blue" recently made its streaming debut on Netflix — where it proceeded to rank among the Top 10 on the platform (via Flix Patrol) in the United States. How high will it go? Well, there's good reason to believe that this will continue to make some (ahem) beautiful noise.
Neil Diamond fans are turning Song Sung Blue into Netflix's latest streaming hit
It may seem like Hollywood is currently going through a passing-of-the-torch moment from old geezers like us (meaning anyone over the ripe ol' age of 30, I suppose) to the Gen Z crowd currently eating up box-office sensations like "Obsession" and "Backrooms," but there's still plenty to go around for those of us who knew of life before the advent of the internet. "Song Sung Blue" is one of these types of movies and unabashedly so, as one of the rare movies to cast a more experienced pair of stars like Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson and actually lean into the idea of older legends trying to recapture the energy of their youth.
The results are both heartwarming and a little silly (we spoke more in-depth about this on an episode of the /Film Weekly podcast last year), but viewers at home are finally getting around to watching all the highs and lows of "Song Sung Blue" for themselves. According to Flix Patrol, the title first charted at the #8 spot on Netflix's Top 10 list on June 14, 2026, before making the leap to #6 only a day later. While it has some distance to go before making the streaming platform's own weekly rankings, this is an awfully encouraging start for a movie that ultimately made a hair under $60 million worldwide (against a budget reported to be in the $30 million range).
Admittedly, the plot follows all sorts of tropes of the genre: relationship troubles, complicated father/daughter dynamics, struggles with alcoholism, and generally self-destructive behavior. But for those looking for a movie that feels like more than the sum of its parts? "Song Sung Blue" just might surprise you.