If you’re one of the lucky fans who’ve been to a Billie Eilish concert, you know how special that experience is. There’s nothing quite like being in the pop star’s presence in real time alongside other people who’ve memorized the lyrics and been touched by her music, too. In less than two weeks, a lot more fans will be able to witness the energy around a Billie Eilish concert, however. Hit Me Hard And Soft: The Tour (Live In 3D) arrives in theaters as one of the more unique 2026 movie releases.
CinemaBlend had the chance to chat with Billie Eilish and James Cameron after the co-directors debuted the movie’s 3D experience at Las Vegas’s CinemaCon. During my chat with the pop singer, Eilish shared told me how having the director of the Avatar films by her side for this taught her about moviemaking. In her words:
Having been on tour doing that show for over a year, I was very much like super, super deep in how the show looked from the audience and from my point of view and from the people in the bleachers and the people in the front and more just like the live experience. And, I think I learned so much about how [when] portraying it on camera, you do actually need to do it a little bit differently than you do it live.
Billie Eilish has put out a concert film before, but the scale was much smaller considering it was filmed at the Hollywood Bowl during the COVID-19 pandemic without a live audience and released on Disney+. This time around she brought James Cameron along to film the four shows she played at Manchester’s Co-op Live in July 2025 with 3D cameras to bring her shows to life. As Eilish also shared:
A shot that I might be like, ‘No, that's not right’ for the in-person thing [was] actually a beautiful shot in the movie and makes it come to life in this different way that I hadn't thought of before.
The 24-year-old has been in the directors chair before for a number of her music videos including “What Was I Made For?”, “Happier Than Ever,” “Lost Cause,” and “Therefore I Am.” Capturing a massive show full of over 20k people is a very different story and it sounds like there was a learning curve for her that she was noticing on the fly. While she had instincts in place for making the live show entertaining for everyone, capturing it as a movie meant different choices needed to be made. As the singer added:
I think it was pretty amazing to be able to be with people with such different backgrounds and such different skill sets and different things that we are hyper fixated on. And, hearing the way [James Cameron] saw certain shots where I was like, ‘Oh, I didn't even think of that.’ And then I’d say some stuff about the music that [James] was like ‘Oh, I didn't think of that.’ Those two things combined really just made a wonderful, amazing collaborative experience.
Billie Eilish definitely has a great reputation for breaking boundaries when it comes to releasing her music – with how her Hit Me Hard And Soft album cover was photographed being just one of them. She’s also frequently involved fans in the experience with things like holding listening parties in theaters for the album as well. Her and James Cameron connecting to direct this concert movie feels like simultaneously an unlikely pair and makes all the sense in the world.
You can get tickets for Billie Eilish - Hit Me Hard And Soft: The Tour (Live In 3D), hitting theaters starting May 8.
