- Taylor Swift sidestepped major Hollywood studios and cut a deal directly with AMC Theaters to distribute The Eras Tour movie
- Hollywood executives are furious about the deal – which was brokered by Swift’s mom and dad and could reshape the way producers distribute their movies
In its opening weekend, the pop singer’s concert film, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” raked in about $96 million in the box office in the United States and Canada, movie theater chain AMC said Sunday.
AMC, which also is the distributor of the film, expects “Eras” to play “to big audiences for weeks to come,” Elizabeth Frank, the company’s executive vice president of worldwide programming and chief content officer, said in a statement.
“Eras” gives fans who couldn’t score a ticket (because of the Ticketmaster debacle or their cost) a chance to sing, dance, dress up and swap home-made Eras braceletswith other Swifties. The movie, directed by Sam Wrench, is nearly three hours long and was filmed over three nights at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles this summer.
Swift’s mom and dad, Scott and Andrea Swift, thrashed out terms with AMC CEO Adam Aron during secret talks which lasted several weeks when Taylor’s movie producers screwed up. Usually, movie producers recruit a big name studio for marketing and distribution – in exchange for a large chunk of the box office takings. But Swift and her family were reportedly disappointed by the studios’ demands, so cut them out and went directly to AMC, the world’s largest theater chain.
“It took less than 24 hours for the Taylor Swift The Eras Tour concert film to shatter AMC’s US record for the highest ticket-sales revenue during a single day in AMC’s 103-year history,” AMC said at the time.
AMC was suffering because the blockbuster movies haven’t lived up to the BarbiHeimer summer successes and the Hollywood writers/actors strike has created a content shortage.
John Miltmore explains more about the deal in the clip below.