Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour” concert film officially opened to $92.8 million in North America and $30.7 million internationally, bringing its first weekend total worldwide to a massive $123.5 million supplied.
Those ticket sales are slightly below Sunday’s estimates of $95 million to $97 million domestically and $126 million to $130 million worldwide, but are still extremely impressive. At the domestic box office, it’s the second-biggest October debut of all time, behind only 2019’s “Joker” with $96 million.
With minimal advertising and unconventional distribution strategies, “The Eras Tour” easily landed the best opening ever for a concert film and the seventh-biggest opening weekend of the year. It’s a remarkable start for a film that was added to the calendar just six weeks ago.
“This October would have been terrible without Taylor Swift,” said Jeff Bock, an analyst at Exhibitor Relations. “This is a huge bright spot.”
The film was released in cinemas via an atypical route as it is not distributed by a major studio. Instead, the pop star released the film with the help of AMC Theaters, the world’s largest cinema chain. Swift, who produced the film himself, gets to take home about 57% of ticket sales, with theaters keeping the remaining revenue and AMC taking a small distribution fee. The film is not exclusive to AMC; It is playing in 3,855 theaters in the United States and Canada and 4,527 venues worldwide.
It turns out to be very lucrative for everyone involved. In its first weekend in theaters, “The Eras Tour” became the highest-grossing concert film in domestic box office history, surpassing the total $73 million haul of 2011’s “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never.” At the end of its Swift’s film hopes to compete with the genre’s global record-holder, 2009’s “Michael Jackson: This Is It” ($261 million).
“The Eras Tour” has far fewer showings than the traditional national release. After the opening weekend, shows will only be shown on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays to ensure that the halls are as full as possible. Although this makes it difficult to predict the film’s box office performance, “The Eras Tour” is expected to be among the top 10 or 15 biggest releases of the year.
“The Eras Tour,” a filmed version of their globe-trotting stadium show, lasts 2 hours and 48 minutes and gets the audience singing, dancing and even taking videos of all the fun in the theater. It’s no surprise that the film received an “A+” CinemaScore rating from ticket buyers, and many of them will be coming back for repeat screenings.
AMC Theaters chief content officer Elizabeth Frank thanked Swift for bringing the film to the big screen.
“Her spectacular performance delighted fans, who danced through the film in costume,” she said in a statement. “Given the great recommendations and fans purchasing tickets multiple times to see this concert film, we expect the concert film ‘Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour’ to be shown to large audiences for weeks to come.”