Skip to content
Curated playlist

English-language historical drama films

  • The Other Boleyn Girl (2008 film)The 2008 film The Other Boleyn Girl left out Hever Castle, the Boleyn family's real home.
  • Oppenheimer (film)The teaser for the film Oppenheimer, released on the 28th of July 2022, carried a live countdown to 5:29 a.m. Mountain time on the 16th of July 2023. That hour marked the 78th anniversary of the first detonation of an atomic weapon.…
  • Gone with the Wind (film)Hattie McDaniel was barred from the premiere of Gone with the Wind by Jim Crow laws, then won an Oscar.
  • The Beguiled (1971 film)The Beguiled posters showed Clint Eastwood with a gun, but the film has almost no action.
  • Apollo 13 (film)The Apollo 13 film's famous line "Failure is not an option" was never spoken by Gene Kranz during the real mission.
  • Hamnet (film)Hamnet, a 2025 historical drama directed by Chloé Zhao, opens with a single written line about the English town of Stratford. In Stratford, the names Hamnet and Hamlet were treated as one and the same. The film then follows William…
  • Anne of the Thousand DaysUniversal served champagne and filet mignon to Oscar voters after each screening of Anne of the Thousand Days.
  • Free State of Jones (film)In the film Free State of Jones, a Confederate deserter leads an armed revolt in Mississippi.
  • Gods and Generals (film)Gods and Generals, a 2003 American Civil War film written and directed by Ronald F. Maxwell, grossed $12.8 million at the box office. That sum fell far short of what the project had swallowed. Most of the money came from one man, the media…
  • Macbeth (1948 film)Orson Welles filmed his 1948 Macbeth in just 23 days. He used leftover Western sets at Republic Pictures.
  • The Name of the Rose (film)In the 1986 film The Name of the Rose, an old monk poisons a book about comedy to stop laughter from teaching.
  • Frankenstein (2025 film)Frankenstein, the 2025 film directed by Guillermo del Toro, began as an act of avoidance. In 2016 del Toro confessed that part of him had for more than 25 years "chickened out of making it." He felt that finishing the film would end the…
  • The Birth of a NationThe Birth of a Nation was screened at the White House in 1915. The next night, the Supreme Court cheered it too.
  • Wuthering Heights (2026 film)The 2026 film Wuthering Heights is a romantic period drama that Emerald Fennell produced, wrote and directed. It is only loosely based on the 1847 novel by Emily Brontë. Fennell did not set out to make a faithful retelling. Her stated aim…
  • Glory (1989 film)The film Glory shows a soldier being flogged, but no such flogging of Black troops ever happened.
  • Lincoln (film)In the film Lincoln, agents offer federal jobs to win votes to end slavery. The amendment passed by two votes.
  • Flesh and Blood (1985 film)The hero of the manga Berserk was designed after Rutger Hauer's mercenary in the film Flesh and Blood.

Queue