Oasis reunion documentary opens in US theaters as Gallagher brothers give first joint interview in years

"Oasis: Don't Look Back in Anger," the Walt Disney Studios documentary chronicling the band's blockbuster 2025 reunion tour, expanded into roughly 1,200 theaters across the United States and Canada on Friday, carrying an asset no marketing department could manufacture: Liam and Noel Gallagher sitting down together on camera for the first time in more than 15 years.

The 123-minute film, directed by Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern and written and produced by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, mixes concert footage from the Oasis Live '25 tour with backstage access and a single joint interview the brothers gave for the project. It had already opened in limited IMAX engagements on September 9 before its wide North American release two days later, and it began UK previews the same week.

The numbers

Industry trackers projected the film would gross $2 million to $4 million in its opening weekend from about 1,200 North American theaters, a respectable but modest haul for a specialty documentary release, according to box-office data compiled by The Numbers. In the UK and Ireland, the film topped the daily chart during Wednesday previews with roughly £675,000 across nearly 670 cinemas, putting it ahead of two other new wide releases, "Practical Magic 2" and "Pressure," on its first day out.

Critically, the documentary has landed well: it holds a 96 percent approval rating from 53 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 98 percent audience score, and a "generally favorable" 80 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 22 critics. Those numbers put it among the best-reviewed music documentaries of the year, even as several critics flagged the same reservation about how far it goes in examining the brothers' famous feud.

How the reunion happened

Oasis split acrimoniously in August 2009, when Noel Gallagher walked away hours before a scheduled Paris concert, ending a partnership that had produced some of the best-selling British rock records of the 1990s. The brothers spent the better part of two decades trading public insults rather than stage time. Their surprise announcement of a reunion tour, and the tour's eventual staging in 2025, became one of the most closely watched comebacks in recent music history, and Disney and its production partners moved to document it almost from the outset, first detailing the project in a press release from The Walt Disney Company announcing Knight's involvement.

The film premiered out of competition at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival on September 5, where it reportedly received an eight-minute standing ovation, before rolling out in UK and Irish cinemas and then across North America. Disney's UK press materials describe the film as a limited theatrical engagement ahead of a later streaming release on Disney+ internationally and on Hulu and Disney+ in the United States.

Who this affects

The release lands at a moment when theatrical documentaries built around legacy rock acts have become a reliable, if not blockbuster, business for studios and exhibitors chasing older, nostalgia-driven audiences who might otherwise skip a multiplex. For Disney, the film is a relatively low-risk complement to its streaming slate; for theater chains, catalog-act documentaries have increasingly served as counterprogramming to franchise tentpoles. For Oasis's fan base, many of whom never expected to see the brothers perform together again, let alone speak candidly on camera, the film functions as both concert souvenir and closure.

What critics and the filmmakers are saying

Reviews have largely praised the film's access and its concert footage while questioning how deeply it probes the Gallaghers' history. The Hollywood Reporter's Richard Lawson wrote that anyone hoping for a reckoning with the feud "will not be satisfied," calling it instead "a nice, celebratory, water-under-the-bridge movie." The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw was more enthusiastic, calling the film "highly enjoyable" for how it "recollects how effortlessly funny the Gallagher brothers are, like a great comic double act."

Knight, who spent months embedded with the band, has described the film as fundamentally a story about repair. In an interview about the project, he framed the brothers' rapprochement in blunt terms.

"Here we have a well-publicised rift between two people, and here they are coming together. That leads to forgiveness that leads to redemption," Knight said, according to an interview published by NME.

Knight also recounted the tension of the brothers' first rehearsal together after so long apart, saying there was no immediate warmth between them, only a businesslike exchange, before the old chemistry gradually returned over the course of the tour. In the film itself, Noel Gallagher tells the camera "the bickering is over," while noting of his brother, "I forgot how funny he was" — the pair's first joint on-camera interview in more than 15 years.

• Directors Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern, written and produced by Steven Knight
• Distributed theatrically by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
• Premiered out of competition at the Venice Film Festival on September 5, 2026
• 96 percent critics' score and 98 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes

What happens next

The film's opening-weekend box office totals in North America were still being finalized as of Saturday morning, with studios typically reporting final domestic numbers Sunday or Monday. Its UK and Irish run continues in wide release, and Disney has not yet announced a specific date for the film's move to streaming, saying only that it will arrive on Disney+ internationally and on Hulu and Disney+ in the United States later this year. Whether the reunion documented on screen extends into further Oasis live dates or new recorded music remains, as of this weekend, an open question the film itself does not answer.