While AMC Theatres and Variance’s Taylor Swift: The Official Release of a Showgirl was indeed front-loaded, declining 36% on Saturday with $10M from its pure Friday gross of $15.8M, the 14x Grammy winner is seeing a standalone gross and opening weekend for her cinematic experience of $33M.
There have been other album launches teed up with movies to prop them, ala Imax’s 2021 Covid release of Halsey’s If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power ($135K opening), but none like Swift’s. Can you think of another music-film or theatrical release that compares to this box office threshold, especially as an 11th hour stunt? It’s a feat to make any motion picture studio envious. Not even Disney in all its brand wattage has ever attempted to do a theatrical release on a big IP like this, with only two weeks of thrifty promotion. Even The Weekend in all of his platinum success, and with the help of Jenna Ortega couldn’t pull off what Swift did here in her opening; his Hurry Up Tomorrow, a component to his latest album and tour, not even seeing a tomorrow with an opening of $3.3M and a final domestic of $5.2M.
In a further boast: Swift has the No. 1 album and No. 1 movie of the weekend. That is arguably unprecedented: not even Prince could pull that off on the No. 1 opening weekend of Purple Rain at the B.O. back in July 1984 with his album (the soundtrack ranked third at the time of the movie’s release).
Read more at Deadline
