Why Concert Films Like ‘Stray Kids’ and ‘EPiC’ Are Hot Tickets at the Box Office

Published by IndieWire on Mar 05, 2026 4:00 PM

By Brian Welk
March 5, 2026 4:00 pm

While generally the bread and butter for event cinema releasing distributors, players like Bleecker Street, Neon, Paramount, and Netflix are all playing the event cinema game. 

Call it the “shock and awe” approach to film distribution.

It was only about a month before the release of Bleecker Street‘s concert film “Stray Kids: The dominATE Experience” that the distribution company really started talking about it. And when its trailer was ready to go? That’s precisely when the company made movie tickets and showtimes available for the special event release of the K-pop boy band’s show at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles.

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There’s nothing new about the prevalence and success of concert films, but while studios have had some one-off successes with them, they’ve largely been the domain of event cinema releasing companies like Trafalgar Releasing or Fathom Entertainment.

Now, though, they seem to be everywhere. Neon so far has made $15.4 million for the Elvis Presley concert documentary “EPiC,” Paramount is releasing a Billie Eilish concert film as directed by James Cameron this summer, and Netflix on March 8 will air a live Harry Styles concert.

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Even with some of the biggest artists in the world, these event cinema concerts can flounder if they don’t actually feel like events. Fathom Entertainment CEO Ray Nutt said that after over 100 concert film releases since being founded in 2004, the company has evenly diversified its slate and has been more selective in its offerings, even as competition for some of these titles have ramped up among other distributors. The best ones lean into the concert’s exclusivity and the community element you can only get in a theater.

“They want to learn something about an artist or a band or whatever that they’ve never seen or heard before. A lot of it also goes to, does a does an artist or a band have touring going on? That can work both ways,” Nutt said. “If you have some bands that are absolutely oversaturated in markets and everybody’s seen them live, and they’ve seen the best of them, there’s been certain product out there where people say, ‘Well, OK, I’ve seen it. I’m not going to go to the movie theater see it.’ We try to work with the band and the management and the content provider to make sure that we’re understanding what the objective is of that band.”