By anjali
This past weekend, Swifties brought their dance movements and friendship bracelets to cinemas around the nation, transforming them into musical venues. The Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour’s enormous, first-place launch between $95 and $97 million in North America and $30.7 million abroad helped the tour reach a staggering $123.5 million in its first weekend’s total earnings worldwide, according to AMC Theatres.
These ticket sales are incredibly amazing despite being slightly below Sunday’s expectations of $95 million to $97 million domestically and $126 million to $130 million globally. It had the second-largest October debut ever at the American box office, only behind “Joker” from 2019 with $96 million.
It has become an unquestionable hit thanks to a novel distribution experiment, premium pricing, celebrity support, and lax movie theatre protocol (more dancing and shouting than a Star Wars premiere). The movie, which was compiled from Swift’s summer concerts at Southern California’s SoFi Stadium, debuted in 3,855 theatres across North America beginning with “surprise” Thursday night previews. Following Joker’s $39.3 million, its opening day total of $39 million was the second-highest ever for October thanks to those showtimes.
“The Eras Tour” easily had the best start of all time for a concert movie and the seventh-largest opening weekend of the year with little promotion and unique distribution methods. For a movie that wasn’t even put on the calendar until six weeks ago, it’s a tremendous start.
“This is a phenomenal number,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “To have a blockbuster-style opening weekend for a concert film is unprecedented.”
“This October, without Taylor Swift, would have been awful,” says Jeff Bock, an analyst with Exhibitor Relations. “This is a huge bright spot.”
Swift, the movie’s producer, avoided the Hollywood studio system by striking a direct distribution agreement with AMC, the biggest theatre chain in the country. Swift scarcely needed a typical marketing strategy because she has 274 million Instagram followers.
She urges audience members to sing, dance, and even record the fun inside the theatre in “The Eras Tour,” a 2 hours and 48-minute long film of her world-spanning stadium extravaganza. It’s hardly surprising that the film received an “A+” CinemaScore from viewers, many of whom want to return for additional viewings.
The exhibitor and Beyoncé agreed to a similar arrangement for Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé, which debuts on December 1. At The Eras Tour premiere earlier this week in Los Angeles, the two celebrities posed together. Hollywood actors provided a much-needed boost of star power after more than 90 days of a strike that has left most red carpets devoid of glamorous talent and forced the postponement of several high-profile projects until next year.
AMC Theatres’ chief content officer Elizabeth Frank thanked Swift for bringing the movie to the big screen.
“Her spectacular performance delighted fans, who dressed up and danced through the film,” she said in a statement. “With tremendous recommendations and fans buying tickets to see this concert film several times, we anticipate ‘Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour’ concert film playing to big audiences for weeks to come.”
