‘Becoming Led Zeppelin' Has Rocked the Box Office by Treating It Like a Secret Concert Event
In 2019, director Bernard MacMahon stood in front of film buyers at Cannes and discussed his love of Led Zeppelin. The director of a little-seen music documentary 'American Epic,' he had been selected by the '70s rock gods to tell their story in a rock-doc, something the collective of Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and the late John Bonham had never before agreed to do. He had been entrusted with enormous responsibility by icons who had been particularly selective about their legacy. At the time, he didn't even have footage to screen to the buyers.
Two years later, MacMahon's film 'Becoming Led Zeppelin' screened as a work-in-progress at Venice. The song remained the same; as IndieWire's review suggested at the time, the film wasn't ready for primetime, and it sat without a buyer. Sony Pictures Classics, which had been following the film from the beginning, saw it again in summer 2024 after it had been reworked. The distributor knew back in 2019 that Zeppelin giving their blessing was special and that it had an audience, but only if the film was right.
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Now after a release this February, 'Becoming Led Zeppelin' has received a whole lotta love and has surpassed $10 million at the North American box office. It's one of the highest-grossing documentaries at the box office domestically in the last two years, currently just behind last year's 'Piece by Piece' and the right wing satire 'Am I Racist?' And worldwide, it's already at $14.3 million with the likelihood that it will surpass $15 million globally.
Roughly $4.7 million of that haul was generated in IMAX screenings, including a $3 million opening weekend that was IMAX's biggest exclusive opening for a music film to date. It was a target of IMAX's after it was acquired by SPC, and it proved a good bet. It plays again on over 200 IMAX screens for one night only on April 2.
The film has exceeded expectations for SPC, but the organic success 'Becoming Led Zeppelin' has generated has been through an unconventional and carefully calculated marketing campaign. SPC first began showing teaser trailers ahead of IMAX showings of 'Venom: The Last Dance' last October, but the distributor wouldn't even announce the movie's existence until two months later in December. It generated mystique and online buzz as a result, and the only reviews of it were the tepid ones out of Venice from years earlier.
When December rolled around, SPC immediately put tickets on sale for showings as though it was an audience buying concert tickets months in advance of a show. It generated $2 million in advance ticket sales, and only then did SPC announce the additional IMAX only screenings beginning on February 7.
Press was part of the process, but not critics. 'Becoming Led Zeppelin' wasn't screened for critics in advance to create a communication breakdown. Instead, the distributor looked to even bigger evangelists who might ramble on about what they saw. With the band themselves not involved, the Counting Crows and Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters were among musicians who saw the film at an early screening. A similar screening in Nashville with local musicians had a similar impact.
SPC bought ads on Howard Stern's radio show and, by January, got him talking about the movie, turning their simple one-minute ad buy into a 20-minute segment. The film was also heavily promoted on the radio, with the film screened for a number classic rock radio DJs across the country who spent months talking it up. Several stations also held private screenings for select listeners and then aired their reactions to the film coming out of the theater.
Suddenly Zeppelin was back in the cultural ethos. 'Stairway to Heaven' and 'Whole Lotta Love' returned to the Billboard charts for the first time in decades. 'Whole Lotta Love' was featured in a Nike Super Bowl ad coincidentally the same weekend the movie opened wide. And audiences were wowed by the sound quality, the deeper dive history that befuddled even hardcore fans, and the fact that MacMahon's film featured full songs, something that you generally get only in snippets in other music docs.
The demand for the film is real. Just don't get trampled under foot on your way to the theater.
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