Whether you’re a Taylor Swift Lover (hey Swifties!) or you’ve inexplicably got Bad Blood with the global pop icon (in which case just, err, Shake It Off), she’s the reason you’ll have seen no Blank Space in your local cinema’s listings – or indeed seats – this week. The hotly anticipated release of three-hour concert spectacular Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour has stormed its way to a… Ready For It?... mammoth $128 million opening weekend at the box office, smashing records left, right, and centre in the process.
After just four days, the film – which sees Swift perform over 30 songs from 10 albums to a packed out crowd at Los Angeles, California’s 70,000 capacity SoFi stadium – has comfortably outstripped Justin Bieber: Never Say Never’s global cume of $99 million to become the highest grossing concert film of all-time. In fact, if you want to get down to brass tacks, its $100 million plus takings in pre-sales alone guaranteed the top spot before a single cinema screening had even taken place. What’s more, Swift’s box-office Love Story doesn’t end there. Surpassing Swifties’ Wildest Dreams, The Eras Tour’s $96 million domestic open places it right alongside Todd Phillips’ Joker as the highest-grossing October opening weekend ever, too. Check out the trailer for the film below to see what all the fuss is about:
First unveiled only six weeks ago, back in August (great song, by the way), the unique release strategy for The Eras Tour is destined to become part of cinema folklore. Swerving traditional distribution models, Swift set up her own production company – handily named Taylor Swift Productions – and she and her family negotiated with cinemas for direct distribution rather than shopping her film around to any major studios, securing a SAG-AFTRA interim agreement by simply meeting all the union’s new provisions.
With the film set to run on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays for the next month to ensure Swifties the world over will share the theatrical experience in packed-out multiplexes rather than at half-full Monday matinees, cinemagoers can expected to be Enchanted by The Eras Tour for many weeks to come. And if you somehow haven’t gotten aboard the Taylor Swift hype train yet, then what can we say? You’re on your own kid, and you always have been. Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour is in cinemas globally now.