Taylor Swift’s concert film breaks US presale records
Taylor Swift broke an AMC record on Thursday with $26m in presale tickets for her Eras tour concert film, besting Spider Man: No Way Home’s $16.9m. That brings Swift’s total pre-sale haul to $37m, according to Deadline, including tickets sold by AMC, Regal and Cinemark – higher than the first day presales of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, which will run for four weekends starting 13 October, seems poised for a huge box office haul – Deadline projects a $70m opening weekend – so much so that it has affected the fall release schedule. Horror sequel The Exorcist: Believer was originally slated to enter theaters on 13 October, is now premiering a week earlier, on 6 October. ““Look what you made me do. The Exorcist: Believer moves to 10/6/23,” producer Jason Blum wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Thursday, along with the hashtag #TaylorWins. The film stars Ellen Burstyn, Leslie Odom Jr and Ann Dowd.
The concert film, which captures Swift’s billion-dollar, career-spanning, cultural moment of a tour, has thrown a wrench into the October release calendar, including Apple and Paramount’s Killers of the Flower Moon, set to premiere on 20 October. Martin Scorsese’s three-plus-hour historical epic, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone, arguably appeals to a different audience than The Eras Tour, but both will compete for showtime slots, though Killers of the Flower Moon has a lock on Imax screens.
The announcement of the release comes just days after Warner Bros decided to move the hotly anticipated sequel Dune: Part Two to March next year as a result of the strikes. It also comes after both Barbie and Oppenheimer broke box office records this past summer.
A member of Sag-Aftra, the 33-yearold pop star was reportedly granted a union waiver to film during the strikes, according to Billboard. The two-hour, 45-minute concert film, directed by Sam Wrench (who has also filmed concert specials for Billie Eilish, Lizzo and Brandi Carlile), was shot over three nights in August at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, where Swift capped the 52-date American leg of her tour.
The projected $70m opening would set a record for a theatrical concert film, outpacing Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert ($31M opening in 2008), Michael Jackson’s This Is It ($23.2M in 2009) and Justin Bieber: Never Say Never ($29.5M opening in 2011).
AMC is reportedly adding additional showings to keep up with demand when “necessary and available”.