Photo Credit: Billie Eilish by Lars Crommelinck / CC by 2.0
After a strong opening weekend, Billie Eilish’s concert film takes a nosedive in its second week, failing to reach outside its core audience.
The premiere of Billie Eilish’s concert film, Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D), drew a massive crowd at Los Angeles’ Westwood Village Theater. The film, which she co-directed with James Cameron, even had the best opening for a concert film in the last three years—just #3 behind Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour concert documentary and Beyonce’s Renaissance film, both from 2023. Hit Me Hard and Soft made $7.5 million domestically and over $20 million worldwide against its $20 million budget.
But just 10 days later, the party is over; its second weekend saw “soft” numbers of just $800,000—a decline of over 88%, placing it firmly in the 14th spot. Especially with James Cameron at the helm and his use of 3D to film it, the movie was expected to pique the interest of those outside of Eilish’s core fanbase. Additionally, like Taylor Swift before her, analysts expected more die-hard fans to make repeat trips to the theater. However, that doesn’t seem to have been the case.
It’s worth mentioning that even Taylor Swift saw a big dip in her numbers in the Eras Tour film’s second weekend—from $93.2 million to just $33.2 million. Beyonce’s Renaissance film also dropped off majorly in Week 2, with a 75% dip from $21.8 million to $5.5 million. But Eilish’s numbers aren’t inspiring confidence that the film will pick back up in the coming weeks, as we head into Memorial Day weekend and the premiere of Disney’s Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu.
“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,” said Comscore senior analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “This movie marketplace has this consistency of momentum that is being buoyed just by all these movies hanging in there.”
Of course, the success of Lionsgate’s Michael, which continues to perform well week after week, could be eating into the audience of more casual music fans who would rather see a dramatization about a legacy act than a concert film from a contemporary artist.
To Hit Me Hard and Soft’s credit, the film opened in just over 2,600 theaters. That’s pretty light for a studio-wide release and makes its opening numbers that much more impressive. With a limited release, it saw more butts in seats at each—and Eilish herself even made surprise appearances at a couple of them.
Since the project was filmed in 3D, the majority of moviegoers saw it that way, about 88% of the audience. Around 25% came from premium large-screen formats, led by Dolby Vision. The 3D showings would have inflated the box office numbers with an upcharge, but Eilish still came out well ahead of the similarly formatted Katy Perry: Part of Me from 2012, which racked up $32.7 million worldwide.
