by Abb Jones
The Reelness

Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour concert film has earned $92.8 million in its opening weekend, making it the highest-grossing domestic concert film. Like ever.

Nearly five million people saw the film this past weekend.  For comparison, the next best performing film over the weekend was The Exorcist: Believer, with a relatively paltry $11 million. The prior domestic concert film record was Justin Bieber’s Never Say Never in 2011, which earned $73 million over several weeks.

Swift bypassed the big studios, working out an exclusive deal with AMC Theaters, the world’s largest theater chain, to distribute her film to 3855 theaters. Sixty percent of tickets for the nearly three-hour film, which was shot during her August 2023 performances in Los Angeles, were bought in advance. Typical presales numbers for big blockbusters are usually around 40%. Movie studios quickly shuffled their movie release schedules to make way for her, knowing their films would suffer financially going up against her.

The release of Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour comes at a critical time for AMC, as the five-month-long writers strike caused multiple disruptions to the movie studios’ release schedule. Swift has encouraged moviegoers to treat the event like an actual concert, saying “Eras attire, friendship bracelets, singing and dancing encouraged.”