Swifties, get ready to make history.
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour The concert film officially hit the market on Thursday, three weeks before its theatrical release on October 13.
The National Research Group shows the film opening to $75 million domestically, with big profits, according to sources with access so far. Many believe the film will approach or exceed $100 million at launch (one source suggests as much as $125 million) and note that it is difficult to follow such an offer because concert films are not the norm. (When Barbie first come on tracking, NRG also suggested $75 million on the low side. It ended up being a historic $162 million).
Swift’s team and AMC Theaters surprised fans — and Hollywood studios — when they announced in late August that a secret film about her blockbuster Eras Tour would hit theaters in October.
In an unorthodox move for an exhibitor, AMC, the largest theater circuit in the US and the world, has acquired the distribution rights to the concert film. AMC works with Variance in booking the films at competing cinemas.
The announcement was good news for the entire exhibition community amid the ongoing strikes by writers and actors, which prompted several high-profile fall films to postpone their releases due to the ban on talent from doing any publicity. Sonys Kraven the Hunterstarring Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the Marvel antihero, moved from October 6 to August next year, while Warner Bros. and Legendaries Dune: part two moved from November 3 to March 2024.
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour hopes to become a cultural phenomenon, just like the female summer blockbuster Barbie. (A number of mid-range films and smaller titles have been moved up by one or three weeks to avoid a confrontation with Swift.)
Eras tour however, is a concert picture and won’t play 24/7 for weeks (as of now, the film is scheduled to play over the course of several weekends). Box office experts say it will be interesting to see how front-loaded the film is.
Either way, Swift’s film has all the makings of becoming the highest-grossing concert film of all time in its first weekend at the North American box office.
To date 2011 Justin Bieber: Never say never holds the record domestically with a total lifetime of $73 million, not adjusted for inflation. It earned another $26 million overseas, for a worldwide total of $99 million. Michael Jackson’s posthumous 2009 documentary/concert film This is it earned $72.1 million in North America and $181.9 million worldwide.
