Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour Scores Enchanted $39 Million Opening Day At The Box Office

Todd Phillips' "Joker" has competition from an unexpected source — a source with blonde hair, an acoustic guitar, and red lipstick that never goes out of style. Concert film "Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour" has scored the second-biggest October opening day ever, grossing $39 million on Friday including $2.8 million from Thursday previews (per Variety). That's just a sprinkle of confetti behind the $39.3 million Friday total for "Joker" back in 2019, and it bumps "Venom: Let There Be Carnage" ($37.4 million) down to third place.

Concert films aren't typical theater fare, so opening weekend projections aren't as confident as they usually would be, but Deadline reports that "The Eras Tour" is expected to land somewhere between $90 million and $109 million Friday-to-Sunday. Variety similarly predicts that it "has a shot at topping $100 million," and The Hollywood Reporter also has it pegged at the $100 million mark. "Joker" grossed $96.2 million in its debut, which means that Taylor could very well take the crown for the biggest October opening weekend by Monday.

Taylor Swift cut out the middleman with "The Eras Tour" by making a deal directly with AMC Theatres, which is also showing the movie in other theater chains via a sub-distributor. The globally beloved singer-songwriter was reportedly adamant about releasing the film alongside the live tour itself (for which resale tickets cost north of $1,000), in order for it to feel more like an event. With that same goal in mind, "Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour" is also only screening on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays — so bad luck to anyone who was hoping to simulate their own personal Taylor Swift concert by going to a quiet Monday matinee.

A $100 million opening weekend, or even substantially less, would easily be the biggest ever debut for a concert film, beating current record-holder "Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert" ($31.1 million). As smart a gambit as this release was, though, I have to dock a few points for the ill-advised, last-minute surprise tickets drop for Thursday night previews. 

Swift announced the early access screenings with only a day's notice, citing "unprecedented demand." Since most Swifties had, at that point, already bought non-refundable tickets for other showings, the Thursday previews were a pretty quiet affair and kicked the weekend off with more of a whimper than a bang. Thursday evening screenings are standard for most major releases, and had those tickets been opened up earlier, there's no doubt that "The Eras Tour" would be looking at a significantly larger opening weekend take. It also could have easily broken the October opening day record; "Joker" grossed $13.3 million from Thursday previews (around a third of its opening day gross) compared to $2.8 million for "The Eras Tour" (just 7% of the $39 million Friday total).

According to IndieWire, the last-minute announcement also caused headaches for exhibitors:

IndieWire spoke to multiple sources in distribution and exhibition who responded to the whimsical scheduling with anger, annoyance, and even some disgust. It meant neither AMC nor Swift was sensitive to the effort needed by 3,850 theaters to secure last-minute staffing and security to accommodate the potential for massive demand [...] Exhibition competitors are angry that once again AMC had advance knowledge that allowed it to prepare revised show times and adjust online ticket sites.

Yep, Taylor Swift is a nightmare dressed like a daydream. But hey, don't say she didn't warn ya.