![Key Metrics for Social Media Marketing [Infographic]](https://www.socialmediatoday.com/imgproxy/nP1lliSbrTbUmhFV6RdAz9qJZFvsstq3IG6orLUMMls/g:ce/rs:fit:770:435/bG9jYWw6Ly8vZGl2ZWltYWdlL3NvY2lhbF9tZWRpYV9yb2lfaW5vZ3JhcGhpYzIucG5n.webp "Key Metrics for Social Media Marketing [Infographic]")
No movie is entirely devoid of worth or conversation-starters — case in point, Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert. Turning 15 years old this month, this feature, at first glance, doesn’t seem to be anything particularly special. It pleased its target demographic back in February 2008 and reinforced just how ubiquitous the Hannah Montana brand was in the late 2000s. What else is there to talk about when it comes to this motion picture? But look a little bit closer and Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert is downright fascinating in how it’s the kind of box office hit that Hollywood will never be able to replicate. Who could’ve known at the time, when Miley Cyrus was belting out “Nobody’s Perfect,” that we were all witnessing the end of an era?
‘Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert’s Box Office Significance
It’s impossible to overstate the box office achievements of Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert. Like many movies aimed heavily at women, this concert feature arrived in theaters without much in the way of expectations for how much it would make at the box office. Even the loftiest ambitions for how much cash Miley performing in digital 3D could drum up, though, paled in comparison to its actual box office performance. On just a $6.5 million budget, Best of Both Worlds opened to $31.1 million. A staggering achievement considering the title was playing in just 683 theaters (a reflection of how few movie theaters were capable of exhibiting digital 3D movies in early 2008), this was also the biggest opening weekend ever for a movie debuting the same weekend as the Super Bowl.
By the end of the year, Best of Both Worlds still ranked as the 23rd biggest opening weekend of 2008, surpassing the openings of much more heavily-marketing films playing in way more theaters like Step Brothers, Eagle Eye, and The Happening. It was also by far the largest opening weekend of that year for a movie opening in under 1,000 theaters (the second-highest-grossing movie in that regard for 2008 was the $6.8 million bow of Fireproof). Looking over the genre of concert movies, Best of Both Worlds was, at the time, the highest-grossing movie ever in this domain and only the second (following Eddie Murphy: Raw) to crack $50 million domestically. Even today, Best of Both Worlds is still the third highest-grossing concert movie in history in North America.
These statistics aren’t just important so that you can bust them out the next time you’re at a party where the topic of Miley Cyrus comes out (you’re welcome for that). They’re necessary to understand just how momentous Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert was in its theatrical run. This thing wasn’t just lucrative, it was a definitive sign that the success of Hannah Montana could be translated into other mediums beyond television. Plus, it gave the concert movie a massive boost in life. In the years following Best of Both Worlds, a slew of other concert movies would make their way to theaters, with This is It and Justin Bieber: Never Say Never both managing to narrowly eclipse the domestic total of Best of Both Worlds. This movie had a sizeable impact on pop culture…and yet Hollywood will never be able to recapture its success.
Why Hollywood Will Never Make Another ‘Best of Both Worlds‘
A more low-key reason for a box office smash like Best of Both Worlds being impossible in the modern world is simply the ubiquity of social media. This extension of the Hannah Montana brand came about just as Facebook and Twitter were in their infancy. Before the invention of these platforms, a concert film was the only way people in lower-income brackets would have a chance to see concerts they might not be able to afford. Plus, certain projects offered behind-the-scenes glimpses at the everyday lives of famous pop stars, an extra tantalizing prospect for any superfan of the hot boy band or pop singer of the moment. Today, though, footage of famous concerts runs rampant on social media, you can just watch those performances there. Similarly, pop stars plaster Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok with glimpses into their everyday lives off the stage. Concert films of these kinds of stars don’t have much specialness anymore.
Meanwhile, the post-2008 concert film resurgence, despite This is It and Justin Bieber: Never Say Never doing quite well, failed to constantly deliver hits on the scale of Best of Both Worlds. Titles like Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience, Katy Perry: Part of Me, Glee: The 3D Concert Movie, and Justin Bieber: Believe all failed to live up to box office expectations. With these failures, Hollywood was less inclined to give major promotional pushes to further concert movies. The financial cratering of Jonas Brothers (which couldn’t even crack $20 million in its domestic run) seems to have been especially fatal long-term for the genre, since it appears to have scared Disney away from ever giving other Disney Channel stars concert movies in the vein of Best of Both Worlds. Disney would continue to produce tween stars in the years after that concert movie failure, but it won’t be producing anything like Best of Both Worlds again anytime soon.
Best of Both Worlds also arrived at just the right moment to exploit digital 3D as a fresh new technology. The idea of seeing a big-screen movie in that format was still a brand-new treat, especially since the technology, up to that point, had been primarily applied to feature-length animated movies. Seeing live-action humans in the realm of digital 3D was enough of a novelty to help further reinforce Best of Both Worlds as something special as a theatrical event. It’s just one of the many aspects of this movie you just couldn’t replicate in the modern world, where digital 3D is still considered a punchline after being so overexposed in the early 2010s.
But what really makes Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert impossible to replicate in the modern world is its source material. Hannah Montana originated on the Disney Channel, where it became a ratings sensation. This program debuted in an era where there were more limited options for major kid’s entertainment on television, which allowed something like Hannah Montana to emerge as a pop culture phenomenon. But it’s difficult to imagine that kind of program being possible today, at least if it debuted on Disney Channel. A DefunctLand video about the Disney Channel jingle presented data showing that live viewership of the network had plummeted by a little over 90% from 2007 (a year when Hannah Montana was especially popular) to 2021.
The Disney Channel is a shadow of its former self, like all cable channels. Because of that, it’s hard to imagine it being able to launch a show like Hannah Montana with a sizeable enough fanbase to spur a hit like Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert into existence. Bands with notable young fanbases still exist today, but the fragmented nature of modern pop culture has resulted in smaller fanbases than even 15 years ago. This is concisely reflected by how any theatrical concert films about modern singing sensations tend to debut either on streaming (where we’ll never know how much or little they were viewed) or as limited-run Fathom Event screenings. These titles can still exist and draw passionate fans, but they won’t be as big or capable of demolishing box office records like Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert.
‘Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert’ Ended an Era…But Its Legacy Survives
Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert really was the end of one chapter for the never-ending book of theatrical exhibition. In some ways, the way Best of Both Worlds contrasts with the modern world of pop culture is truly disheartening. The promise of digital 3D evident in this concert movie getting diluted in the years that followed by overzealous studio executives, for instance. Meanwhile, the abandonment of concert movies by Walt Disney Pictures despite the box office success of Best of Both Worlds was a harbinger of how limited this studio’s theatrical movie slate would become in the years to come. Best of Both Worlds was both cheaper and way more profitable than subsequent massive Disney blockbusters like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and The Lone Ranger. However, blockbusters still dominate the modern Disney movie landscape while Best of Both Worlds is a relic of the past. Still, change isn’t innately bad.
Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert is an impossible movie to exactly replicate in the modern box office landscape. That kind of concert film based on a cable show is dead, but in the interest of “a new attitude,” that doesn’t mean similar surprise box office hits in general are no longer possible. Last year’s Everything Everywhere All at Once proved that, even in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, movies can follow in the footsteps of Best of Both Worlds and redefine what we think is possible at the box office. Future instances of this phenomenon won’t be concert films, but perhaps they’ll be motion pictures that revive another seemingly dead genre on the big screen. There’s an unpredictability embodied by the box office haul of Best of Both Worlds that’s just unspeakably exciting. If there’s anything important to take away from the inimitable existence of Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert, it’s that truly anything can take off like a rocket at the box office.
