Not content with conquering the music charts, Taylor Swift has now broken records atop the North American box-office with her concert movie, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, which has just opened to the tune of $95-97 million.
The popbuster movie debuted to the kind of figures usually reserved for superheroes and sequels. In fact it matched Joker‘s 2019 October debut of $96 million, which is currently the largest opening weekend for the month of October on record. According to THR we will have to wait until Monday morning for an official figure to be released by distributors AMC.
To put the performance into perspective, The Eras Tour has already out-grossed the lifetime domestic runs of Justin Bieber: Never Say Never ($73 million), Michael Jackson’s This Is It ($72.1 million), and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert ($65 million). AMC estimate that Swifties around the world would have added a further $50 million to the opening weekend.
Falling to number 2 in the chart was Universal and Blumhouse’s The Exorcist: Believer, which moved its release date to avoid being crushed by the concert movie, and summoned a further $11 million for a domestic cume of $44.9 million. The legacy sequel is performing much better overseas, where it has taken $84.9 million, but a long way off justifying Universal’s $400 million outlay for the rights.
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