Swift does all too well at box office
Movie theaters turned into concert venues this weekend as Swifties brought their dance moves and friendship bracelets to multiplexes across the country.
The unparalleled enthusiasm helped propel “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” to a massive, first place debut of $95 million to $97 million in North America, AMC Theatres said Sunday.
It’s easily the biggest opening for a concert film of all time, and not accounting for inflation, Swift’s film has made more than the $73 million “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never” earned during its run in 2011. In today’s dollars, that box-office total would be around $102 million.
And if it comes in on the higher end of projections when final totals are released, “The Eras Tour” could be the biggest October opening ever. The one to beat is “Joker,” which launched to $96.2 million in 2019.
Internationally, the film compiled from Swift’s summer shows at California’s SoFi Stadium is estimated to have earned $31 million to $33 million, bringing its global total in the range of $126 million to $130 million.
“The Exorcist: Believer” placed a very distant second in its second weekend with $11 million, followed by the “Paw Patrol” movie in third with $7 million. Rounding out the top five was “Saw X” with $5.7 million and “The Creator” with $4.3 million.
The spotlight on Swift has been especially intense lately as a result of her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. The two made separate surprise appearances on “Saturday Night Live” this weekend and were also photographed holding hands in New York.
Dayton literary award winners names:
Geraldine Brooks’ “Horse,” a novel about race and forgotten history, and Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa’s “His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice” have won awards from the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation.
The awards, recently announced by the Dayton foundation, honor a book of fiction and of nonfiction for using “the power of literature to foster peace, social justice and global understanding.”
The runner-ups were Lily Brooks-Dalton’s
“The Light Pirate” and Adam Hochschild’s
World War I-era history “American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis.”
Actor Goddard dies: Mark Goddard, an actor best known for playing Major Don West in the 1960s television show “Lost in Space,” has died at age 87. He died Oct. 10 of pulmonary fibrosis, according to his son.
On “Lost In Space,” which ran on CBS from 1965 to 1968, Goddard’s character was the pilot of the Jupiter 2 carrying the Robinson family on a mission to colonize space. In 2008, Goddard wrote a memoir called “To Space and Back.”
He also had roles on “Johnny Ringo” and “The Detectives,” and appeared in “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “Perry Mason.”
Singer Gary Puckett is 81. Actor Michael McKean is 76. Actor George Wendt is 75. Singer Alan Jackson is 65. Animator Mike Judge is
61. Singer Ziggy Marley is
55. Actor Wood Harris is
54. Singer Wyclef Jean is
54. Rapper Eminem is 51. Actor Sharon Leal is 51. Actor Felicity Jones is 40. Actor Chris Lowell is 39.