As suspected, Taylor Swift broke some big box office records during last weekend’s debut of The Eras Tour concert film after some major projections were made. Oppenheimer filmmaker Christopher Nolan, who has one of the top-earning 2023 movie releases yet himself, took notice and even credited the movie’s impressive rollout with being a game-changer for Hollywood as a whole.
During a contentious time between creatives and the Hollywood studios, Taylor Swift found a way to make her Eras Tour movie in the middle of multiple strikes. Christopher Nolan recently shared his thoughts on the move while speaking at The Graduate Center, CUNY (via YouTube). In his words:
Taylor Swift is about to show the studios, because her concert film is not being distributed by the studios. It’s being distributed by the theater owner, AMC, and it’s going to make an enormous amount of money. And this is the thing, this is a format, this is a way of seeing things and sharing stories, or sharing experiences that’s incredibly valuable. And if they don’t want it, somebody else will. So that’s just the truth of it.
Nolan’s comments came just a few days before Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour movie collected $123.5 million globally in its first weekend, making for the biggest opening for any concert movie ever. As Nolan pointed out, Swift found a way to produce the movie herself, go over the studios and place the movie in the hands of the theatrical distributors, which in this case was AMC Theatres.
Nolan made the point while answering a question regarding if there’s a future of the theatrical experience. The filmmaker, who just saw Oppenheimer cross $900 million in worldwide box office earnings, was confident in movies continuing to come to theaters, but cited the continued tension between “commerce and art” for studios. He used Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour film as an example of movies still having a place in theaters even without studios considering the methods the singer took in order to bring it to audiences.
Taylor Swift met with SAG-AFTRA and followed the criteria the union asked of her to produce the film during the Hollywood strike. In addition to Swift earning an interim agreement from SAG, she made it through her own production company before working with AMC Theatres to distribute it to many theaters. With her deal, she gets to take home 57% of ticket sales, and other chains could screen the film as well.
As Nolan shared, it’s a great example that filmmakers don’t always need studios to make movies and bring them to the big screen. During Nolan’s recent discussion about filmmaking, the writer/director also shared how “encouraging” it was to him for Oppenheimer to exceed expectations commercially now that the biopic has become the third highest-grossing movie of 2023.
Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour movie is now playing in theaters. Check out what things hit different about the big screen event film from the actual tour experience here on CinemaBlend.