It’s shocking to hear, but pop star Billie Eilish is still only 24 years old, yet she is already a multiplatinum, multi-Grammy Award winner who also has two Oscars for Best Original Song, earning the awards at cinema’s most significant award ceremony without ever having stepped on either side of the camera in a major way.
That’s about to change, though, as Eilish has not only co-directed her third concert film alongside none other than James Cameron, but she is reported to play the lead role in Sarah Polley’s next feature film.
Pairing with a legendary icon such as James Cameron, who is best known for his contributions to science fiction and action cinema, might seem like quite the odd match, but it makes a lot of sense when you take a closer look.
To begin with, Eilish has worked with major directors on each of her previous concert films, with Robert Rodriguez (best known for the likes of Spy Kids, Desperado, From Dusk till Dawn, and Sin City) and Oscar winner Patrick Osborne directing 2021’s Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles, while the director behind Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, Sam Wrench, helmed Billie Eilish: Live At The O2 in 2023.
Yet, as a director with deep technical know-how, Cameron in particular brings an important set of skills to the table as their film, Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour, is in 3D, a technology with which Cameron is extremely familiar given his groundbreaking work on the Avatar franchise, which first released in 2009. The concert film is to be screened on May 6th, before widely releasing on May 8th, and while reviews have yet to drop, Eilish has earned consistent praise for her onstage performance abilities, and with James Cameron working by her side, this is sure to be a spectacle.
If it wasn’t enough that Eilish is working with one Canadian Oscar-winning filmmaker, reports have revealed that the multi-faceted artist is in talks to play the lead role in Sarah Polley’s adaptation of famed poet and writer Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar. In fact, The Bell Jar is Plath’s only novel, centring on a woman named Esther whose mental illness is exacerbated by the social restrictions and sexism women faced in the 1950s. Given that it is a semi-autobiographical piece released a mere month before Plath’s suicide, it is certain to be an emotionally heavy role that would demand a great deal of Eilish.
Nonetheless, Eilish is immensely talented and surely possesses the chops for the role, as an artist such as Sarah Polley approaches her adaptations with the utmost respect and seriousness, evidenced by her last feature film, 2019’s Women Talking, which saw Polley win the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, having been based on the novel by Canadian author Miriam Toews.
However, talks are likely ongoing as Eilish has not been officially cast in the role as of yet, nor has there been any further general information on the project since March. Polley’s adaptation of The Bell Jar will not be released until 2027 at the earliest, assuming of course that they shoot sometime this year.