One Direction, Guns N’ Roses, Jennifer Lopez and Metallica are in the process of creating 3D concert movies slated for 2013 releases. With recent concert movies doing poorly in the box office, One Direction is what this genre with dwindling profit opportunities needs.
“Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: The Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour” was the first major concert movie blockbuster, raking in $65 million after a $35 million opening weekend. This spawned teen idols Jonas Brothers, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, the cast of Glee, and also Michael Jackson, to follow suit.
The “Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience” collected $19 million in sales, “Justin Bieber “Never Say Never”” grossed $73 million, and Michael Jackson’s posthumous “This Is It” grossed nearly $72 million domestically.
Recently, “Glee: The 3D Concert Movie” and “Katy Perry: Part of Me,” neither of which broke the $8 million mark in their opening weekends, flopped with wide releases, causing a debate as to the profitability of the genre.
The concert movie had a revival in 2008 with “U2 3D”, the Rolling Stones film “Shine a Light,” and “Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: The Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour.” Before this surge, they were promoted as novelty items or low budget specialities but IMAX and 3D helped propel the films made in 2008 into major motion pictures.
These movies are extremely appealing to studios as they are a much cheaper alternative to studio productions. The successful concert movies collect 30 to 40 percent of their total gross in their opening weekend.
“They tend to hold in there pretty well, although you'd expect the real fans to come out in the first week and then to drop off steeply from there,” Paul Dergarabedian of Hollywood.com said in an interview with mySanAntonio.com. “It tends to come down to the same thing: Is it a good movie? Are people talking about it?”
The more profitable concert movie tends to be from artists with a large majority of their audience consisting of teen girls but a narrow audience prevents substantial profit. But these films give the audience a behind the scenes glimpse they would not see attending their concert and give them a better view of the show.
One Direction has sold over 14 million singles, eight million albums, over one million copies of a recording from their first tour, and according to Nick Gatfield, chairman and chief executive of Sony Music Entertainment UK, they represent a $50 million business empire.
Morgan Spurlock, director of One Direction’s upcoming concert movie, said, "These guys have gotten so huge in such a short amount of time - why?" he said. "What makes them more special than any other people?"
And for a band who has broken several records including: the most pre-orders of a single and the first UK group to enter the US Billboard chart with their debut album, they should have no problem single-handedly reviving the concert movie genre.
