Billie Eilish Film Hits Hard for a Concert Doc at the Box Office — but a Little Soft for a James Cameron Joint

To have seen the crowd inside the Westwood Village Theater for the premiere of “Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft The Tour in 3-D,” you might have presumed we were about to have another “Eras Tour” concert film situation on our hands. People were dancing in front of the auditorium and actually filming the movie screen with their phones — coincidentally, of other concert-goers filming the actual live concert with their phones, which you can see in striking detail in the film’s 3D, for better or worse.

And no doubt, the Eilish film, which she co-directed with James Cameron, had the best opening for a concert movie in the last three years. For domestic openings this decade, it’s No. 3 behind Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” concert doc and Beyonce’s “Renaissance” film, both from 2023. “Hit Me Hard and Soft” made $7.5 million domestic and $20.1 million worldwide against a $20 million budget.

It opened well above the openings of films like this year’s “Stray Kids: The dominATE Experience” ($5.7 million) and “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert” ($3.8 million). It also opened well above the last concert film from Eilish, 2023’s “Live at the O2,” which was an event film released by Trafalgar Releasing on less than 600 screens and which made $1.3 million. “Eras Tour” also had a smaller budget, $15 million, than the 3D, tech heavy “Hit Me Hard and Soft” at $20 million, though in partnership with Interscope, Paramount likely isn’t holding the bag for all of it.

That said, “Hit Me Hard and Soft” had arguably some “soft” numbers when compared to the rest of the weekend. It finished fifth for the weekend behind other new opening “The Sheep Detectives,” which made nearly $16 million domestic. For reference, Cameron’s other two documentaries he has directed, 2003’s “Ghosts of the Abyss” and 2005’s “Aliens of the Deep,” finished their theatrical runs with $27.5 million and $12.7 million worldwide, respectively.

By pairing Eilish with Cameron in all the marketing, the hope was maybe that the film would appeal not just to concert fans but to more casual film fans who know Cameron can deliver a spectacle. Predictably though, the audience was pretty overwhelmingly female and primarily under 25 (just 10 percent of the audience was over 35), though it did over-index with the Hispanic community.

Now the plan is for it to leg out into next weekend and even Memorial Day weekend. Concert films typically drop off a cliff after Week 1, as the bulk of the box office is tied up in pre-sales and attendance from the biggest fans in the first weekend. For instance, “Eras Tour” in its second weekend dropped 64.4 percent (though that was still good enough for a whopping $33.2 million), and “Renaissance” dropped 75 percent in its second weekend. But there’s a chance “Hit Me Hard and Soft” stays afloat a bit longer.

“We’ve had films hanging in there week after week with very minimal drops, which is more important to me than any opening weekend number,” Comscore senior analyst Paul Dergarabedian said of films like “Project Hail Mary,” “Super Mario Galaxy,” “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” and “Michael” that continue to perform week after week. “Michael” in particular could have eaten into the audience of more casual music fans. “This movie marketplace has this consistency of momentum that is being buoyed just by all these movies hanging in there.”

One thing Dergarabedian also sees as promising for “Hit Me Hard and Soft” is that the film opened on just over 2,600 screens, which is light for a studio wide release. By making a concerted effort to limit the number of screens and showtimes, it led to more full houses for that concert atmosphere (Eilish herself surprised a few of them over the weekend).

What’s more, people who went to see it largely saw it in 3D, as they were meant to. About 88 percent of the audience was in 3D, and about 25 percent of the box office came from premium large format screens, led primarily by Dolby Vision showings. Those 3D screenings come with an upcharge that would’ve inflated the box office, but this film can reasonably be comped to 2012’s “Katy Perry: Part of Me.” That film also released in 3D and also made $7.1 million domestic in its opening weekend, and it wound up making $32.7 million worldwide.

So while we’ve learned that even Billie Eilish plus James Cameron isn’t as big as Taylor Swift, Eilish is still only 24, with two Oscars to her name, no less. Her biggest big screen moment? It may still be on the horizon.