Christopher Nolan is a Taylor Swift fan. This is an actual sentence typed in the year 2023. Why does this matter? you ask? Simple, Nolan is a longtime champion of the cinematic experience, and during a recent event at the City University of New York he noted that Hollywood studios need to pay attention to how Swift distributed The Eras Tour, her nearly three-hour concert film. Rather than partnering with a studio to release the movie, Swift went straight to theater owner AMC and secured a multimillion-dollar deal for herself. Nolan said the move was a demonstration of the power theatrical releases still wield and that if studios and streamers “don’t want it, somebody else will.”
Nolan’s comments came just before The Eras Tour blew Martin Scorsese’s new movie Killers of the Flower Moon out of the water at the US box office during the latter’s opening weekend. (Not that Scorsese would necessarily mind being bested by a concert film.) Swift made $33 million; Marty made $23 million. It wasn’t quite a Barbenheimer-level face-off. In fact, it didn’t even inspire wondrously twisted double-feature outings. Instead, cineasts went to see KIllers of the Flower Moon and took to TikTok and X afterwards to complain they couldn’t hear it due to the boom-boom-boom of Swift’s movie. Now we’re all in our Swifties of the Flower Moon/Killers of the Eras Moon era.
Worldwide, Eras has made nearly $179 million and is on track to be the highest-grossing concert movie of all time. With studios slowing their theatrical output amidst the ongoing actors strike (and the dual actors-writers strikes before that), it could also end up being one of the highest-performing movies of the year, period. As theaters struggle to get back to pre-pandemic attendance numbers, it could be Swift that bolsters them most going into the holiday season.
Or, it could be Beyoncé. On Thursday, the other unstoppable pop icon who headlined a massive tour this year announced the premiere dates of her own concert movie. Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé will hit theaters on December 1. It will chronicle the singer’s Renaissance World Tour, and like Mrs. Knowles-Carter’s last concert film—Homecoming—it promises to be huge.
Perhaps it feels like a stretch to claim that concert films will be what saves cinema, but with Hollywood running on fumes, it’s much more possible for their movies to have an impact—or at least for the large impact they would have no matter what to seem like the only thing happening at the multiplex. And not for nothing, but finance types are literally out here claiming these two artists boosted the US gross domestic product in the third quarter of this year, so it’s not like this is just a theory birthed from my stan-internet-infected brain.
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The infiltration of these concert films into the box office conversation signals something else, too: These women might actually want to save cinema, even if it’s just a knock-on effect. Previously, both of them have released content via streaming services or cable networks; now they’re pivoting hard to not-video. Beyoncé originally dropped the Lemonade film on HBO; Homecoming is on Netflix. Swift made a deal with Disney+ for Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions and another with Netflix for the documentary Miss Americana (it also got a small theatrical run, presumably to make it an Oscar contender). So far, their latest offerings are only in theaters. One can only presume Swift will cause an internet meltdown by attending the premiere of Beyoncé’s film, the way Beyoncé did by showing up to Swift’s premiere. (Remember: They can appear on red carpets with the blessing of the Screen Actors Guild—American Federation of Television and Radio Artists even if the actors strike persists.)
Even if they don’t, Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé is still set to rake in cash—the only other movie of note coming out during its opening weekend is, uh, Animal Crossing Christmas Festival: The Movie! maybe? In the meantime, The Eras Tour is still on course to bring in a massive haul; it’s only competition this coming weekend is Five Nights at Freddy’s, and after that there are no more potential blockbusters until The Marvels on November 10. Together, they may not beat Barbenheimer, but they can sure as hell try.