It’s time to call it; Taylor Swift is saving the movies.
Just about got the laughter out of your system? All good? Cool. Let’s continue.
Like it or not, Taylor Swift is the biggest musical act on the planet. You can argue about the quality of her music until your every colour in the face, but her place on top of the planet’s musical food chain is undeniable. She has released 23 albums since 2006 and has sold over 114 million (in the downloading era no less). She is the first woman to amass over a hundred million listeners on Spotify and owns two songs that have been streamed over a billion times on the streaming juggernaut. She has taken on Apple (and won). She has over 272 million followers on Instagram and when she suggested to her fans that they register to vote if they hadn’t already, tens of thousands of people did. The Eras tour is expected to become the highest grossing musical tour in human history while injecting millions into local economies. When she broke her politically neutral stance in 2018 to endorse Democrats for Tennessee’s Senate race and again in 2020 to support Joe Biden, the predictable backlash from America’s political right couldn’t even scratch her brand. She has the GDP of a small country
How powerful is she right now? When it was revealed that she was dating Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, jersey sales for the NFL star spiked nearly 400% overnight. No other entertainer on the planet, arguably no other human being, has the kind of influence she currently wields. She isn’t just a music mega act; she’s a force of nature.
And she’s bringing that unparalleled impact to your local multiplex.
Theatres are in a tough spot right now. AMC, the world’s largest movie chain, is facing almost certain bankruptcy. Cineworld, the biggest theatre chain in the United Kingdom (and owner of Regal theatres, America’s second largest chain), did go bankrupt. Not only is the multiplex still bleeding from the COVID-19 pandemic (burdened with crushing debt as a result), they’re struggling to adjust to the new post COVID movie going reality. There just aren’t as many people going to the movies as there were five years ago. Streaming has changed the game and spiralling global inflation has dented every pocketbook this side of Elon Musk. Factor in the impact Hollywood’s current strikes are having (a number of high profile 2023 releases have been postponed until next year while other potential blockbusters will inevitably be delayed from significant production delays) and theatres are facing a bleak financial future.
In short, there wasn’t going to be anything in Santa Claus’ bag for movie theatres this Christmas and 2024 was probably going to be anything but a Happy New Year.
Enter Taylor Swift and her enormous army of fans.
You may have heard that Swift is releasing a documentary style movie focused on her Eras tour on October 13th. What you may not have heard was that Eras chased away a number of other titles previously scheduled to open on the same day (Exorcist: Believer jumped to October 6th, where it promptly bombed). It turns out they had good reason as ticket pre-sales for Eras broke records immediately, with several prominent websites crashing beneath the traffic. Eras isn’t just going to make money, it’s going to make a Fort Knox sized fortune. It will almost definitely challenge Barbie and Super Mario for 2023’s domestic box office dominance. Globally? Your guess is as good as everyone else’s.
So why should you care if you aren’t a died in the wool Swiftie? Remember the theatres dire financial situation? The one made worse by movies like Ghostbusters and Dune 2 jumping to next spring, leaving theatres with even less reason for paying customers to walk through their doors? Eras may pull in more fans than every postponed movie combined. And there’s no distributor between Swift and the theatres, meaning exhibitors get a bigger piece of the box office pie than they traditionally do. Universal was interested in purchasing distribution rights for Eras with eyes to release it sometime in 2024. That didn’t work for Swift’s camp so they cut out the middle man and made a deal directly with AMC (they’ve recently sold international rights through partner companies). Not only will the theatres make money from every ticket sold (with weeks worth of shows already sold out) or boxes of popcorn moved, but if they can leverage the tsunami of spend crazy fans with strategically marketed merchandise, then Christmas 2023 could have a lot less coal in store than previously feared.
But Eras will also have a dramatically different ripple effect on Hollywood as a whole. While the major studios and the Screen Writers Guild of America have hammered out a deal, the Screen Actors Guild remains on the picket line and as long as that strike persists, no movies or TV shows will be made let alone marketed. Swift and her camp not only produced Eras, but they financed it as well. And they did it meeting every criteria all talent involved demanded, checking off every box for the respective unions. Criteria the studios have steadfastly resisted for months, leading to Hollywood’s current shutdown. There was no drama, no complaining and no whining. They gave everyone a fair shake and are about to blow the doors off the global box office as a result. So if a 33 year old pop musician can make a labour deal work, why can’t Disney or Discovery-Warner? Expect the stubborn studios to feel more pressure with every dollar Eras makes.
The other thing to consider is this; there’s every reason to believe Eras will challenge for 2023’s box office crown, at least domestically if not world wide. Theatre chains will share very generously in that massive success, especially with studios jumping overboard because they refuse to play ball with their talent. What’s to stop more projects like this in the very near future? What if, as movie releases get bottle necked as everyone struggles with the production backlogs from the strikes, Dave Chapelle approaches AMC with the same kind of idea to release his latest (non-Netflix) comedy special in theatres? What if during the box office wasteland of January the NFL airs the Super Bowl in your favourite neighbourhood multiplex (possibly with Taylor Swift playing the halftime show)? What if FIFA follows suit with the World Cup? In fact Beyonce, who has already dipped a toe into both the theatrical pool and the streaming one, is following suit with a movie based on her Renaissance tour dropping December 1st. And word is she used Swift’s deal as a blueprint. None of these would likely make as much money as Eras, but they could all still provide very handsome returns on investments, especially using a non-traditional profit sharing deal. That would throw the theatre chains a much needed life-line while also putting more pressure on Hollywood to produce better content and fewer duds. Competition is usually good for the consumer while staving off complacency.
No matter what you think of her or her music (or her dating life, which has dominated headlines more the past two weeks than politics, national disasters and the Russia-Ukraine war), you cannot deny Swift’s gargantuan global status or that she’s an unrivalled economic draw. And if she can spread her planet sized wings over desperate movie theatres, granting them a small fortune to help fend off the bankruptcy reaper this holiday season, we should all be thankful. Because putting plenty of shiny new presents under theatre chains’ Christmas tree could be just a taste of what she gives.
Image via Prestige Hong Kong
