LOS ANGELES, February 6, 2025 — A documentary about Led Zeppelin has become the unlikely box office king of early 2025, proving that classic rock still resonates with modern audiences. Becoming Led Zeppelin earned over $10 million at the U.S. box office and a worldwide gross exceeding $16 million, demonstrating the enduring appeal of the iconic British band.
A New Wave of Rock Docs
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The success of Becoming Led Zeppelin isn’t an isolated incident. A recent surge in rock-focused films—including documentaries about The Beatles, David Bowie, and John Lennon—suggests a renewed interest in the stories behind the music. While Taylor Swift’s The Official Release Party of a Showgirl grossed a larger $34 million, its format as an album-promoting clipshow sets it apart from the more in-depth cinematic explorations of rock history.
Despite disbanding in 1980 following the death of drummer John Bonham, Led Zeppelin remains one of the world’s best-selling music acts, with estimated sales of over 200 million records and 14.9 billion streams. The band’s historical reluctance to engage with the press made their participation in Becoming Led Zeppelin all the more significant, with the film focusing on their formative years leading up to the release of their groundbreaking second album, Led Zeppelin II, in 1969.
Unlocking the Zeppelin Story
Director Bernard MacMahon believes the film’s success stems from a universal narrative. “It’s a story about how four boys that come from nowhere with no access can get to a position where they can communicate with the world – through really, really, really hard work,” he explained. MacMahon conducted over 170 interviews for the project, though the film features only interviews with the surviving band members: Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and Robert Plant.
MacMahon’s approach to interviewing was key to eliciting fresh perspectives from the musicians. He described “inundating” them with archival material, including audio interviews with Bonham, to trigger emotional responses and move beyond well-worn anecdotes.
Mitchell also noted the film’s appeal to a broad audience. “There’s obviously a built-in audience with Led Zeppelin fans, but you will also be getting teenagers and more casual viewers who are interested in the story – and who feel the cinema is the one place they can turn off their phones.”
The Resurgence of Classic Rock Cinema
The recent success of Becoming Led Zeppelin builds on a trend of innovative rock documentaries. 2021 saw the release of The Beatles’ Get Back, utilizing dozens of hours of archived footage from the band’s 1969 recording sessions. Nick Broomfield’s 2019 film, Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love, explored the relationship between Leonard Cohen and his muse, Marianne Ihlen. More recently, Kevin Macdonald’s 2024 film, One to One: John & Yoko, focused on a lesser-known period in the lives of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Edgar Wright’s 2021 film, The Sparks Brothers, offered an exhaustive profile of the glam rock band Sparks.
Upcoming projects include Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis Presley performance documentary EPiC, a Fleetwood Mac film directed by Frank Marshall (director of The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart), and Paul McCartney’s Man on the Run, detailing his post-Beatles career. Prior to Becoming Led Zeppelin, Moonage Daydream, the 2022 tribute to David Bowie, was North America’s highest-grossing documentary.
MacMahon, who previously created the successful American Epic TV series with Allison McGourty, credits Moonage Daydream’s success with inspiring the cinema-first strategy for Becoming Led Zeppelin. This approach was driven by both artistic vision and the desire to create a unique event for audiences, as Mitchell explained: “It’s almost like going to a gig. People would shell out to go and see the band, and they might just go and see the film the same way – wear their T-shirt and take their buddies.”
For MacMahon and McGourty, who spent years researching and developing the project—including a “work in progress” screening at the Venice Film Festival in 2021—the film’s success validated their efforts. McGourty emphasized the importance of understanding the audience: “One mustn’t underestimate the audience. This is who we’re thinking of every minute in the edit room. We’re aiming for a multi-layered experience that they get more out of each time they watch it.”
MacMahon concluded, “The whole team worked so hard. Every single frame of that film was sweated over. I mean, every single thing. There’s not a single thing that wasn’t thought about, worked on, reworked and polished and polished and polished. And that audience got that and they could see what it was.”
