Diabolical mastermind Taylor Swift to unleash The Eras Tour a day early
"Due to unprecedented demand," Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour will now hit theaters on Thursday, October 12
Having apparently decided that merely blowing up the entire North American box office this coming weekend wasn’t enough, Taylor Swift has now announced that her upcoming concert film, The Eras Tour, will be coming up a little sooner than expected. Per Variety, Swift’s team released a statement today revealing that the film, originally slated to release on Friday, October 13th, in deference to Swift’s own well-known triskaidekaphilia, will now be released a day earlier, in deference to everyone involved wanting to make an enormous amount of money.
Or, to put it in Swift’s own weirdly self-referential words, posted to her Instagram tonight:
Look what you genuinely made me do: Due to unprecedented demand we’re opening up early access showings of The Eras Tour Concert Film on THURSDAY in America and in Canada!! As in… TOMORROW. We’re also adding additional showtimes Friday and throughout the weekend. All tickets will be available by 10am tomorrow morning. And it’ll be showing starting Friday in 90 countries all over the world. I can’t thank you enough for wanting to see this film that so vividly captures my favorite adventure I’ve ever been a part of: The Eras Tour. And the best part is, it’s an adventure we’re still on together.
Given that The Eras Tour is already the highest-grossing concert film in history without having bothered to, y’know, actually come out—having blown past Justin Bieber’s Never Say Never through its $100-million-plus pre-sales alone—it’s not clear how much more revenue the Thursday night shows, and additional weekend showtimes, will end up reaping for the film. We’re pretty sure AMC and Cinemark were happy to accommodate the fan demand, though; the theater chains worked out a direct distribution deal with Swift’s team, foregoing the studio system entirely to get the movie in front of folks, and allowing them to profit pretty directly off of its groundswell of enthusiasm. The current plan is to run the movie on four consecutive weekends, creating an “event” sort of vibe around the whole thing, which captures Swift’s latest, best-selling tour. (Although—and call us crazy!—we suspect the theaters might just decide to extend that run longer if Eras’ practical performance matches its pre-release hype.)