Swifties flock to movie theaters for ‘Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl’
By Auzinea Bacon, CNN
(CNN) — In an unprecedented win for a theatrical release announced just two weeks ago, the album debut event from American pop superstar Taylor Swift topped the domestic box office with about $33 million domestically.
“Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl,” released in theaters for a three-day run to coincide with Swift’s latest album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” played in more than 3,700 theatres in the United States and Canada and in another 3,588 cinemas internationally. The movie earned an estimated $13 million internationally, according to AMC, bringing its global earnings to $46 million.
Unlike Swift’s 2023 “The Eras Tour” movie, which broke concert movie records, “The Official Release Party of a Showgirl” is the only album-debut movie to finish first at the domestic box office and is the highest-grossing album-debut movie at the box office, according to AMC.
“Taylor Swift just realizes how important a movie theater is as a cultural touchstone. Her fans can all be together without having to go to one of her concerts,” said Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Comscore.
David A. Gross, who writes industry newsletter FranchiseRe, described the movie’s success as something “no other musical artist on the planet can do.”
Warner Bros. Pictures’ “One Battle After Another,” which opened last weekend, was No. 2 at the box office, grossing about $11 million this week and falling 49% from last week.
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A24’s “The Smashing Machine” debuted this weekend and finished third with a lackluster $6 million, short of estimates that it could earn around $10 million.
“This is what October is all about,” Dergarabedian said, noting that it’s “not about the summer popcorn” or how big a movie opens, because good reviews are needed during the heat of awards season.
Shawn Robbins, director of analytics at Fandango and founder and owner of Box Office Theory, noted that the mixed-martial arts drama fell below expectations despite the star power of Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt.
“There will be a lot of finger-pointing as to whether or not it was because Taylor (Swift) announced her film … (but) there’s not a lot of a crossover audience there,” Robbins said.
The No. 4 movie this weekend was Universal Pictures’ “Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie” ($5.2 million), followed by “The Conjuring: Last Rites” ($4 million), a Warner Bros. hit from September.
Sony-owned Crunchyroll’s “Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle” has continued to hold on, finishing sixth overall with domestic earnings totaling $124.6 million. The unexpected September hit that broke anime movie records has Hollywood weighing future releases of what some consider a niche genre.
But that will be tested on October 24 when Crunchyroll releases “Chainsaw Man — The Movie: Reze Arc,” which is a continuation of the “Chainsaw Man” TV anime series. It surpassed “Infinity Castle” in Japanese theaters when it opened abroad on September 19, raking in $23.7 million during its first 15 days, according to an announcement from the movie’s public relations firm on X.
“Chainsaw Man” is a popular franchise, Robbins said, and is now expected to perform better at the domestic box office than it would have prior to the success of “Infinity Castle.”
“But anime is always so challenging to predict because that audience is still growing and (the genre is) also very front-loaded a lot of the time,” he said.
The-CNN-Wire
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