In mid-December 2017, director Dexter Fletcher received a call from Twentieth Century Fox Film vice chairman Emma Watts. The studio had just fired Bryan Singer from its long-gestating Queen biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody, in the middle of production. Watts needed someone to rescue the film—fast. Fletcher was familiar with the project, having once been set to direct it himself in 2013, with Ben Whishaw attached to star as bombastic front man Freddie Mercury. But creative differences, primarily over the PG-13 rating, drove the pairing apart. Fox was so desperate now that Fletcher didn’t have time to see Singer’s footage beforehand, nor was he able to meet with Rami Malek, the man who eventually landed in Mercury’s jumpsuit and chompers. Fox called Fletcher on a Thursday to start work that following Monday. He’d have to move quickly for his own sake as well. Fletcher needed to finish the film by April 2018, so he could move on to his own project steeped in F.M.-rock nostalgia, Rocketman, a musical film about the life and times of Elton John.

If it’s not already clear, Fletcher’s schedule juggling paid off massively. Bohemian Rhapsody, a salvage job several times over throughout its development and production lifespan, became a global phenomenon despite lukewarm reviews, made almost $900 million in box-office revenue, and won four Oscars, including best actor for Malek. It also, incidentally, might have set Rocketman up for success when it hits screens in May, with Taron Egerton following in Malek’s mustachioed path, strutting his way through John’s songbook (and many, many elaborate costumes). “No one really knew what Bohemian Rhapsody would do,” Fletcher said in a recent interview, recalling his roller coaster last 18 months. “I knew it was a good film, but there is no exact formula. So when it did come out, and it did so great, we thought, ‘Well, this bodes well for us. There is an appetite for these kinds of films in this world.’”

In the next few months, while Marvel is busy delivering the Avengers to their Endgame and Sony is serving up new iterations of Men in Black and Spider-Man to theaters, another kind of familiar intellectual property will have a moment amid the capes and reboots we’ve come to expect each summer: your parents’ record collection. This year’s release slate features a double L.P.’s worth of classic-rock-inflected films that center on the catalogues of the Beatles, Elton John, and Bruce Springsteen—and there’s more to come. While music biopics and jukebox musicals have long been a reliable story well for Hollywood, going back to Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello’s Beach Blanket Bingo all the way through to What’s Love Got to Do with It, Ray, Walk the Line, and Mamma Mia! But in the wake of Bohemian Rhapsody, something different may be taking shape. Studios are banking on audiences’ familiarity with songs that have been radio staples for decades, in a world in which it is increasingly more difficult to pry audiences off their couches.

In other words: farewell, Captain America. Hello, Ziggy Stardust.

“I think there definitely is a thing with music and film going on at this moment,” said Tim Bevan, the co-chairman of Working Title, the British production company behind director Danny Boyle’s June release, Yesterday. The high-concept fable imagines a world in which the Beatles never existed, except in the mind of one struggling guitarist, who makes fortuitous use of the band’s catalogue.