Taylor Swift’s ‘The Eras Tour’ dances to No. 1 at box office

Movie theatres turned into concert venues on the weekend as Swifties brought their dance moves and friendship bracelets to multiplexes across the country. The unparalleled enthusiasm helped propel Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour to a massive, first-place debut between US$95 million and US$97 million in North America, AMC Theatres said Sunday.

It is the biggest opening for a concert film, however, Justin Bieber: Never Say Never earned US$73 million in 2011, which, in today’s dollars, would be around US$102 million. The one to beat is Joker, which launched to US$96.2 million in 2019.

A unique experiment in distribution, premium pricing, star power and loose movie theatre etiquette–more dancing and shouting than Star Wars –Compiled from Swift’s summer shows at Southern California’s SoFi Stadium, the film opened in 3,855 North American locations starting with “surprise” Thursday evening previews. Those showtimes helped boost its opening day sum to US$39 million – the second-biggest ever for October, behind Joker’s US$39.3 million.

Swift, who produced the film, went around the Hollywood studio system to distribute the film, making a deal directly with AMC, the largest exhibition company in the United States. With her 274 million Instagram followers, Swift hardly needed a traditional marketing campaign to get the word out.

Beyoncé made a similar deal with the exhibitor for Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé, which will open on December 1. The two superstars posed together at the premiere of The Eras Tour earlier this week in Los Angeles.

The Eras Tour, directed by Sam Wrench, is not just playing on AMC screens either. The company, based in Leawood, Kansas, worked with sub-distribution partners Variance Films, Trafalgar Releasing, Cinepolis and Cineplex to show the film in more than 8,500 movie theatres globally in 100 countries.

Elizabeth Frank, the executive vice president of worldwide programming and chief content officer for AMC Theatres, said in a statement that they are grateful to Taylor Swift.

“Her spectacular performance delighted fans, who dressed up and danced through the film,” Frank said. “With tremendous recommendations and fans buying tickets to see this concert film several times, we anticipate [the] concert film playing to big audiences for weeks to come.”

The stadium tour, which continues internationally, famously crashed Ticketmaster’s site and re-sale prices became astronomical. Pollstar projects that it will earn some US$1.4 billion. The concert film offered fans both better seats and a much more affordable way to see the show for the first or fifth time. Prices are higher than the national average, at US$19.89, which references her birth year and 2014 album, and ran closer to US$29 a pop for premium large format screens like IMAX.