Taylor Swift Making Box Office History And She’s Not Stopping
Ask any Swiftie—a devoted fan of Taylor Swift, for those who don’t know—and they’ll tell you when the globally beloved pop star does something, she goes all out. Indeed, the box office is by no means immune to the Swift Effect. According to Deadline, the AMC-distributed concert film Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour initially took home 92.3 million dollars in its opening weekend.
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour is dominating the box office, and is now the most successful concert movie of all time.
And the Taylor tidal wave won’t stop there. While it’s true, expert projections predict a possible drop of 60-70 percent come the films’ second weekend (meaning numbers between $27 and $37 million)—Swift is still very much making history.
Numbers tell an interesting story.
For context, the similar and somewhat recently released (in 2008) Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: The Best of Both Worlds Concert movie underwent a 67 percent downturn when its second weekend rolled around. In 2011, Justin Bieber’s Never Say Never experienced a 54 percent drop by its second weekend.
To put this in perspective, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour is going to pass the entire domestic box office run of The Flash after only two weeks in theaters.
Still, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, despite its projected revenue drop, will nonetheless, in all likelihood, boast the best second weekend for a concert film in domestic box office history.
It helps to grasp the magnitude of the musician’s impact to contrast her film’s splash with that of another non-concert movie.
What film? Martin Scorsese’s Killer of the Flower Moon, which Apple Original Films produced in partnership with Paramount. Don’t get us wrong—this movie should draw crowds enough to earn the film, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, a projected 20-to-25 million dollars domestically in its opening weekend. And these would be spectacular returns. But they’d be overshadowed by the sheer immensity, the endless reams of cash, earned by Taylor Swift’s concert film.
Though, in all fairness, it hasn’t been smooth sailing lately for the film industry—at least where actors and writers are concerned. The actors’ strike has nixed months of potential promotion for many projects, which means that huge-budget films like The Creator—which cost a hefty eighty million dollars to make—saw measly returns (a fourteen million dollar opening weekend, in The Creator’s case).
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour is turning movie theaters across the country into concert venues, complete with singing, dancing, and the sharing of friendship bracelets.
In such an environment, said projections for Killers of the Flower Moon are optimistic–but realistic. Because, at the very least, the film’s cast benefits from maximal star power, featuring the above-mentioned Leo and Robert De Niro, to boot. More technically, the film enjoys access to all Imax and PLF screens, meaning there will be no pesky overlap with Taylor Swift’s film. It is also unlikely—in a general sense—that the Scorcese epic (over three hours in length) or Swift’s tour movie will eat from each other’s audience.
Celebrating all of Swift’s musical “eras” through bombastic tributes to each of her albums, the Eras Tour—with its accompanying film—is the artist’s sixth concert tour. It consists of 146 concerts spanning five continents and is her most extensive touring effort to date. Following the 2022 album Midnights, Swift launched the incredibly ambitious trek around the globe on March 17, 2023, in Glendale, California, and is slated to wrap it on November 23, 2024, in Toronto, Canada. Featuring 44 songs over ten acts representing Taylor’s albums, each show surpasses three hours in length. Epic indeed.
