Taylor Swift in the Eras Tour concert movie
It's another good day for Taylor Swift. Having turned live music upside down with her Eras concerts, the singer has now made a splash in the American film business. On Thursday, out of the blue, she announced on social media that a big-screen presentation of the Eras tour will hit US theaters starting October 13.
It was a brutal end-of-summer surprise for the major Hollywood studios. Cinema websites in the United States immediately crashed as the Swifties booked $30 million in advance (beating the previous record of $16 million set by Marvel's Avengers). The continued load on websites is so great that there are fears that it could affect the box office performance of Denzel Washington's new movie The Equalizer this weekend. The system cannot process all these Swifties at the same time.
But while the demand to see Era on the big screen is unsurprising, the real shock is how the deal was made. Swift bypassed traditional Hollywood studios and their distribution networks and teamed up with the struggling movie theater chain AMC. Negotiations were held in super-secret mode. Studios first heard about it when Swift announced the film on social media on Thursday.
In the ensuing chaos, Universal Pictures has delayed the release of The Exorcist: Faithful reboot by a week. “Look what you made me do,” producer Jason Blum tweeted. Not even the devil himself can stand between Swift and her fans.
Swift has experience playing by his own rules. She famously boycotted Spotify for three years in protest of its shareware model (only to get her catalog back the day nemesis Katy Perry released a new album). And her Taylor Version project is an ongoing act to reclaim ownership of her early catalog, which she claims was sold out by her original label. She has also been at the forefront of making the most of concert goers with amazing concert prices on the Eras Tour, where VIP packages cost over £500.
However, even by Swift's standards, her last step is unusually bold. During the summer when the Eras tour was being broadcast to tens of thousands of fans across America, Swift's father, Scott Swift (former vice president of Merrill Lynch), contacted AMC.
Swift Camp had a direct offer for the struggling network, which lost $235.5 million in the first quarter of 2023 alone, according to Puck's Matt Belloni. They wanted to team up with AMC boss Adam Aron to bring the two-and-a-half-hour movie «Taylor Swift: Era» to theaters. AMC will screen the films and also act as a distributor. It was like Taylor Swift contacting record stores directly and asking them to purchase her vinyl, without the record companies getting involved. She didn't just bypass the middleman. She brought the intermediary into a high orbit.
There were already plans to shoot the film over Swift's six nights at the 100,000-capacity So-Fi Stadium in Los Angeles in August: the pop star would pay an estimated $10-20 million out of pocket and retain ownership of the film. All AMC had to do was help bring it to the world by ordering it from their theaters and distributing it to independent chains. The film is expected to hit 4,000 screens in October. It may also be shown in Imax format, which could negatively impact Martin Scorsese's The Flower Moon Killers (its producers are also vying for these limited Imax slots).
Look you made me do this.
The Exorcist: Faithful moves to 06/10/23#TaylorWins
— Jason Blum (@jason_blum) August 31, 2023
After unsatisfactory negotiations with the studios, the Swifts decided to approach AMC. Swift wants the concert film to be released as soon as possible. This will allow you to capitalize on the hype around the tour. Views seem like an event. She is also said to remember that many of her younger fans missed out on tickets, and that the concert film is a very decent (and cheaper) second place.
Hollywood didn't see it that way. The European leg of the tour has yet to kick off and Swift will return for further North American dates later next year. They wanted to give the concert film a long finger — to release it after the Eras concerts had come to an end.
Swift was not prepared to wait. She also didn't need help with marketing, the traditional leverage that studios can use when working with directors and producers. All she had to do was go on Twitter, announce the movies, and smash the Swift version.
Taylor Swift «Eras»
Swift will make millions from this film. But the industry is under the impression that it could make a lot more and is actually leaving money on the table. Studios typically take 70 percent of box office receipts, with the rest going to theaters. The deal with Swift is structured differently: theaters will receive 43 percent, the rest goes to AMC as a distributor and Swift. Cinemas will also retain revenue from merchandise sales during screenings, a figure potentially in the millions. Swift could have made a tougher deal. However, she wanted the film to come out as quickly as possible.
The arrival of Taylor Swift's cinematic universe is the last thing Hollywood needs. The Barbenheimer phenomenon gave the industry rare good news. But instead of capitalizing on it, the executives declared war on the creative community, allowing the actors' and writers' guilds to go on strike.
Make Hollywood See Red: Taylor Swift's 'Ara' Film
With film production halted, studios are already postponing releases when they should make the most of the goodwill built by Barbie and Oppenheimer. For example, the release of Denis Villeneuve's second film, Dune, has been delayed until next year, a move that will cause huge damage to AMC and other chains desperately in need of cash flow.
The lesson is: no one fully understands modern entertainment. like Taylor Swift. Barbenheimer showed that people would go to the movies if they felt they were participating in a shared experience. Hollywood refused to take advantage of this. Instead, Swift did it. For fans of Swift frustrated by the lack of tickets to her live performances, the Eras Tour film will be an unexpected fall holiday. But for Hollywood, it's yet another reminder of the industry's rush towards irrelevance. At the best of times, it's hard to feel sorry for the Hollywood moguls. However, compared to Swift, they really are anti-heroes.
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