“Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” is projected to make millions at the box office, with estimates as high as a $150 million to $200 million global opening – a record-breaker for a concert film.
Screenings begin Friday at 6 p.m. local time in more than 8,000 theaters around the world, many of them booked through the opening weekend. The film has already made $100 million from advance tickets, sold at $19.89 each – a reference to Swift’s birth year. It will run for thirteen weeks.
The previous domestic record-holder was “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never” (2011), which grossed $73 million domestically and $99 million globally. Michael Jackson’s posthumous concert film “This Is It,” holds the global record at $181.9 million.
Swift and her team made the surprise decision to partner directly with AMC Theatres for the film’s release, bypassing the typical middleman of a Hollywood studio to produce and promote it. Ticket revenue will be split 57-34 between Swift and AMC, respectively.
Beyoncé made a similar deal with AMC this month for her Renaissance World Tour film. With numerous major releases stalled and productions halted by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, the potential revenue from massive concert films may be the saving grace for movie theaters which were expecting a rockier next few months. AMC CEO Adam Aron called it “a coup for AMC.”
The Eras tour originally began in March, and is currently on hiatus until November, when Swift will begin touring internationally. It’s a record-breaker in its own right, having crashed the Ticketmaster website with resales and a revenue projected by Pollstar at $1.4 billion.
