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Truth is stranger than fiction, but it's not selling as well at the box office.

In the past five weeks, around a dozen movies based on or inspired by true stories have opened nationwide — and most of them fared poorly in ticket sales.

The biggest hit of the bunch has been Steven Spielberg's "Bridge of Spies," which has taken in nearly $56 million since opening Oct. 16, according to the number-crunching site Box Office Mojo. Only two others have made more than $10 million: the biographical "Steve Jobs" and the Christian-themed sports drama "Woodlawn."

Hollywood might be a tad worried about the way audiences are avoiding movies based on real life, because the studios have more in the pipeline. Two are in theaters Friday: "The 33," a chronicle of the 2010 Chilean mine rescue, and "My All American," an inspirational sports drama.

Between now and year's end, expect to see biographical films on blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo ("Trumbo"), notorious British gangsters The Krays ("Legend"), Mother Teresa ("The Letters"), transgender artist Lili Elbe ("The Danish Girl") and Miracle Mop inventor Joy Mangano ("Joy"). There also will be stories about real-life 19th-century frontiersmen ("The Revenant") and whalers ("In the Heart of the Sea"), and dramas that look at hot-button issues such as the Catholic Church's child-sex-abuse scandal ("Spotlight"), the collapse of the economy in 2008 ("The Big Short") and the NFL's stonewalling of brain-injury research ("Concussion").

Hollywood is good at taking true stories and molding them to its tried-and-true formulas. Essentially, there are five ways filmmakers adapt real events to a comfortable narrative:

Straight • A person is born, grows up, does noteworthy things and dies — in that order. "My All American," which chronicles the short life of a cancer-stricken college football player, works that way. So did "Pawn Sacrifice," a biopic of chess master Bobby Fischer, and "Black Mass," a portrait of Boston crime boss Whitey Bulger.

Stylized • The parts of a life, but presented in a creative way. In "Steve Jobs," director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin plumbed Walter Isaacson's biography of the Apple Computer co-founder for details, but assembled them in the fictional construct of the backstage scenes before three of Jobs' product launches. Theatrical flourishes were abundant in "Experimenter," a biography of psychological researcher Stanley Milgram in which Milgram (Peter Sarsgaard) sometimes spoke to the camera.

Snapshot • Crystalizing someone's life by capturing a short segment of that life. "The 33" takes place in the 10 weeks those miners were trapped underground. In "The Walk," the chronicle of high-wire walker Philippe Petit's life ends with his greatest stunt: his 1974 walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. "Selma" and "Lincoln" profiled great men, Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln, by concentrating on a few months in each of their lives.

Satire • Using real events, thinly veiled, to make comic salad of important issues. "Our Brand Is Crisis" fictionalizes a real Bolivian election to deliver a commentary on American political campaigns. And "Rock the Kasbah," once it gets moving, captures the culture clash between Afghan Muslims and decadent Americans.

Surrogate • Inventing a fictional person in a historic backdrop. Carey Mulligan's radicalized washerwoman in "Suffragette," Jeremy Irvine's corn-fed gay teen in "Stonewall," Bill Murray's jaded rock promoter in "Rock the Kasbah" and Alexander Fehling's naive German prosecutor in the post-Auschwitz drama "Labyrinth of Lies" all have one thing in common: They didn't exist. They serve as conduits for the audience to feel what it was like for the complicated real people in those situations. Alas, the surrogate is often used — as in "Stonewall" and "Rock the Kasbah" — to make the lead character an audience-friendly white male.

All five of these techniques require screenwriters to tweak the details of real life, to one degree or another. Timelines are rearranged, characters are consolidated, events are telescoped — the small facts sometimes being bent to get to a larger truth.

Interestingly, one of the most ambiguous "based on a true story" movies this fall — one that resists easy classification into one of those five techniques — is about what happened when the small details clashed with the larger truth.

The movie, unambiguously and ironically titled "Truth," was based on the memoir of Mary Mapes, the CBS News producer whose career came crashing down on her after a botched 2004 story about President George W. Bush's National Guard record.

In short, Mapes (Cate Blanchett) and her boss, legendary anchorman Dan Rather (Robert Redford), got caught reaching for a bombshell story for which they didn't nail down their facts. They did back up the part of their report on how Bush's family connections got him a cushy assignment in the Texas National Guard. Where Mapes erred was the part of the story accusing Bush of not showing up for that assignment — an accusation backed by dubious documents that she didn't question enough before taking the story to air.

Though Mapes is depicted positively, "Truth" doesn't let her off the hook. The movie details the mistakes she made, but also suggests her career — and Rather's — might have survived if not for pressure from Bush's allies on CBS's corporate interests.

But because "Truth" doesn't fit easily into a preconceived narrative — a martyr for journalism or a left-wing liar who got what she deserved, depending on one's political leanings — it was easily dismissed on both ends of the political spectrum. (After my review ran, the emails I got from conservatives were pungent, and in one case jaw-droppingly racist.)

If nothing else, "Truth" — as much as any movie based on real events — is a reminder that journalism and art both can pursue the big truths, but journalists can't fudge the details to get there the way artists can.

Sean P. Means writes The Cricket in daily blog form at http://www.sltrib.com/blogs/moviecricket. Follow him on Twitter @moviecricket. Email him at spmeans@sltrib.com.