Stephen King's Review Of The Bruce Springsteen Movie Will Sell You On The 2025 Flop

Scott Cooper's "Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere" was a haunting biopic with a powerhouse lead performance. It was also a box office bomb. Now, however, Stephen King has weighed in with one of his social media reviews, claiming to have been moved by the film and hopefully prompting a few of his fans to check it out.

2024 gave us Timothée Chalamet's safe but enjoyable Bob Dylan biopic "A Complete Unknown," and while it featured many tired biopic tropes, it was a very well done homage to the singer's early Greenwich Village years. More importantly, the movie was about something. It perfectly captured the essence of its title, taken from Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," by depicting the musician as a mysterious outsider constantly reinventing himself and prompting those around him, and by extension us as the audience, to question what our past means in the grand scheme of our lives and how the stories we tell about ourselves shape our futures. It's part of the reason director James Mangold isn't a big fan of cinematic universes, where the goal is to set up future installments rather than craft a story that has something to say.

In 2025, it was Bruce Springsteen's turn. "Deliver Me from Nowhere" saw Jeremy Allen White portray the legendary singer-songwriter in a movie that similarly had something to say. What was that? Well, according to Stephen King, who delivered his brief review via Bluesky, the movie was about the craft of writing and how beauty emerges from hardship. As the writer put it, "What moved me about this film was the way it shows, without a load of sentimental corn, how writers work, drafting and redrafting their material. It's also about how beautiful things — music, books, poetry — emerge from unhappy times."

October 2025 was a disaster at the box office, and "Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere" didn't escape the doom and gloom. The biopic went up against anime at the box office, debuting the same weekend as "Chainsaw Man — The Movie: Reze Arc," which ultimately came out on top in terms of profit. "Deliver Me from Nowhere," meanwhile, was a flop by any estimation. The film made $44.5 million on a $55 million budget, and if you know anything about how movie box office actually works you'll know that's even worse than it seems at face value.

All of that is a real downer, not only because it's indicative of a wider box office trend, but because the film was actually good. "Deliver Me From Nowhere" is buoyed by an incredible, haunting performance from Jeremy Allen White, who plays Springsteen as a man drowning in depression without ever making it feel maudlin. The movie follows the musician as he writes his melancholy masterpiece, 1982's "Nebraska," showcasing the creative process behind The Boss' most introspective album. Its depiction of this process clearly appealed to Stephen King, who's obviously no stranger to drafting and redrafting works.

But it's arguably the second part of the author's terse review, in which he highlights the beauty emerging from the darkness, that's the most important. Making art from suffering is and always has been one of the most beautiful and moving things any creative can do, and a film exploring that process is an important one regardless of whether anybody went to see it at the multiplex. As such, if you're yet to check out "Deliver Me from Nowhere," take the master of horror's advice and give it a go.