On Thursday, Taylor Swift announced that a 2 hour and 45-minute-long film version of her historic Eras Tour concert would be released in AMC theaters nationwide on Oct. 13, and on Friday, AMC announced that Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour had already set a staggering single-day ticket sale record for the theater franchise: the movie earned $26 million in presale tickets in 24 hours, easily unseating the previous record-holder, Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home. (The superhero movie made only a measly $16.9 million in single-day sales.)
The fact that Swift’s concert film was going to be a runaway success was a foregone conclusion; the Eras Tour itself is set to earn $1 billion in sales, which would make it the highest-grossing tour of all time, and Swift fans who didn’t manage to scrape tickets for the event of the year will surely flock to theaters to see the movie lest they be left out entirely.
But the film’s eclipse of a Marvel record, a feat it accomplished with ease, illustrates just how mammoth Swift’s influence and celebrity has become in the past couple of years.
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In 2022, the superhero movie studio’s net worth was estimated at around $53 billion, and its success is built upon a seemingly endless trove of characters and beloved stories culled from comic books.
In contrast, Taylor Swift Industries, so to speak, is built upon the appeal of one character arc and narrative alone: Swift’s.
The fact that Eras movie ticket sales are even hotter than Marvel’s “confirms what most of the studios have been saying… that a theatrical release enhances the value of later windows like streaming,” Richard Gelfond, CEO of IMAX, told CNBC on Friday. “While it’s fantastic, I don’t think there is going to be a lot of cookie cutters, because there’s just one Taylor Swift.”
The current all-time worldwide box office record holder in the concert film category is pop star Justin Bieber’s 2011 smash Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, which topped out at $99,034,125.
In one day and via presale sales alone, Swift’s film managed to gross around the same amount as 2008’s U2 3D, number 12 on the list, did in its entire worldwide theatrical run.
According to Variety, Swift’s movie is expected to surpass $100 million in sales in its opening weekend, but there’s no telling just how astronomical the returns could be overall.
According to the theater chain’s announcement Thursday, every U.S. AMC Theatre location will run the Eras movie at least four times per day on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sundays throughout its theatrical run, the length of which has evidently not been set in stone.
Worldwide, Forbes noted, Spider-Man: No Way Home made $1.9 billion after its release in 2021, but if the new AMC record is any indication, Spider-Man should watch his back.
