Will Taylor Swift Concert Movie Break Box-Office Records?
by EG
The Taylor Swift marketing machine has its afterburners on full power as the pop superstar tries to dominate another segment of the entertaiment economy with her concert movie, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour. The movie is almost guaranteed to have a very big debut weekend, but it's unclear whether Swift's hundreds of millions of social media followers will translate into record-breaking box office. Read on for details.
Via Deadline.
There’s a reason why her last name is Swift.
The 12x Grammy award winner, the day after the world premiere of her AMC-distributed concert movie Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, found her way back to Kansas City for the Chiefs’ NFL game vs. the Denver Broncos.
Why? Because her movie is opening tonight, dummy.
After all, her appearance at the Sunday Night Football matchup between the Chiefs and Jets earlier this month helped boost that game to 27 million viewers — the highest such number since the Super Bowl. Tonight, the NFL captured her cheering her reported b.f. Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, which at the time of this report has clocked 3.2 million views on Twitter.
All of this comes on the night that Eras Tour begins previews – a last minute decision, we might add – to what is looking like under $5M, per Deadline sources. Please note that’s a very rough estimate for Thursday night, and AMC has not weighed in on that figure. Swift only announced moments before her world premiere last night that fans could snap up tickets early today for 6 p.m. local time shows. Note her original plan was to kick off the concert film at 6 p.m. Friday on Oct. 13; the day of her lucky number.
Some in distribution circles have snarked that the last-minute decision by team Swift to hold previews is a smack-in-the-face to die-hards who wanted to be the first at the concert pic’s initial showtimes (which were Friday at 6PM). The film is still expected to rack up $100M+ domestic at 3,850 theaters, and another $50M abroad for a $150M WW global weekend. However, let’s get real: You can always cancel and rebook your tickets. Or if you really love Swift, you can see her twice: tonight and tomorrow night. Such is the blessed nature of capitalism.
Note tonight’s previews were so last minute, that you can’t project a normal Friday off of the figure. Many are expecting ticket sales to be front-loaded which is the tendency for younger skewing female movies. Another variable not accounted for in tracking, which typically polls moviegoers: Most of Swift’s fans aren’t known to be regular moviegoers. That’s made box office forecasts on Eras Tour very tricky.
Get the rest of the story at Deadline.