‘Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour’ can save the fall box office, but will it top ‘Barbie’s’ opening?
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This weekend, we’ll be entering new box office territory, as arguably one of the biggest pop stars on the entire planet shares her record-breaking sell-out concert tour to theaters across the globe. Read on for Gold Derby’s box office preview.
“Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” – which was filmed at Swift’s August SoFi Stadium concerts in L.A. – was given a surprise announcement at the end of that month with tickets going on sale almost immediately, racking up new sales records for AMC, the theater chain handling distribution, along with Variance. The movie will reportedly debut in 4,000 theaters across the country on Friday and dozens of other territories across the world simultaneously.
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Over the years, there have been many notable concert films released in theaters in an effort to help save the cinematic experience, most notably between 2008 and 2013, with “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never” being the highest grossing one to date, making $100 million worldwide in 2011, $73 million of that from North America. “Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds” also did quite well, opening with $31.1 million in February 2008, going on to make $65.3 million domestically. Despite featuring a popular boy band, “One Direction: This is Us” opened with about half those two prior movies and ended up with $68.2 million worldwide. Other recent concert docs include “Katy Perry: Part of Me” and “Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience,” as well as a number of concert films starring Korean superstars BTS.
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Still, it feels like “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” is entering new terrain, since it’s being launched almost immediately after the sell-out concert tour that grossed $2.2 billion, and it’s already reporting over $100 million in pre-sales. If those sales are all for its first Friday through Sunday, we’re very likely to see the year’s fifth movie to open over $100 million.
One thing that’s a little different about this release vs. others is that it won’t have Thursday previews. In fact, the very first showings for the movie will be Friday evening. It also will only have showings over the weekend, so no shows on Mondays, Tuesdays or Wednesdays to boost its overall gross. Due to those limited showings, a good number of the movie’s first weekend showings have already sold out, and one presumes there will be a lot of repeat business for the true Swifties over the weeks to come. But limited showings will also make it harder for it to open bigger than other movies this year, since other movies would have had nearly 24 more hours of showtimes included in opening weekend.
Some may have wondered whether “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” can open bigger than the $162 million opening for “Barbie” over the summer, but probably not due to the fewer showings, but also because Swift’s concert film has a run time of 2 hours and 48 minutes, about an hour longer than “Barbie.” Still, it could very well open with somewhere between $125 and 135 million this weekend, and then we’ll have to see how it holds up in the weeks to come. Either way, it’s about to break “Joker’s” October opening weekend record of $96.2 million.
UPDATE: On Wednesday night, Swift announced that “The Eras Tour” would have Thursday night previews after all with more screenings added on Friday. That could theoretically add another $20 million or more to that weekend number, so it was a smart move.
If nothing else, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” will be a good litmus test for “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé,” which AMC will release in a similar fashion on December 1, although so far, it hasn’t sold anywhere near as many tickets in advance.
SEE Box office: All time domestic top-grossing movies
Offering some counter-programming in limited release is Justine Triet‘s “Anatomy of a Fall,” starring German actress Sandra Hüller, which has been the rage of the film festival circuit since debuting at Cannes back in May. It’s a complex courtroom crime-drama about a woman whose husband dies mysteriously after falling from the balcony of a chalet with his wife being the prime suspect in his death.
Triet actually won the coveted Palme d’Or at that prestigious French film festival, and it has played Telluride, Toronto, and most recently, the New York Film Festivals, as well. It’s thought that Triet could get an Oscar nomination for her screenplay, as well as Hüller getting into the highly competitive Lead Actress category, since it wasn’t put forward as France’s entry into the International Feature category. As of now, Neon only plans on giving it a limited release this weekend, but if it does as well theatrically as it has at festivals, it could open with a big per-theater average this weekend.
Indie distributor Utopia will release Eddie Alcazar’s trippy sci-fi thriller “Divinity,” starring Bella Thorne, Scott Bakula and Stephen Dorff, the latter two playing a father and son on a quest for mortality via a special serum, who come across a seductive woman, played by Thorne. It comes out in New York this weekend, L.A. next weekend and then nationwide on November 3.
Check back on Sunday to see how all the movies, but especially Taylor’s concert movie, did.
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