It took Taylor Swift just three hours to make history once again, this time by smashing cinema box office records with her newly announced concert film.
On Thursday, Swift revealed her Eras Tour would hit the silver screen on October 13, with tickets going on sale at the same time as the announcement.
The concert movie will show in AMC, Cinemark and Regal cinemas in the U.S. and will also show in Canada and Mexico.
AMC confirmed that tickets for the Eras Tour movie were the highest advance sales in the company's 103-year history.
The film made $26 million in ticket revenue, which was also a new record for ticket sales for a single title on one day at AMC. The previous record of $16.9 million was held by Spider-Man: No Way Home in 2021.
AMC had already planned to run four showtimes per day on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, but then said "to accommodate this extraordinary demand... AMC already is adding additional auditoriums to play the concert film at numerous theaters throughout the United States."
Swift and the Eras Tour are no strangers to breaking records. Since opening in March, it has already become the highest grossing live music tour of all time, bringing in $1.4 billion.
It is expected the tour will earn $2 billion by the end of its run in August 2024, after Swift extended the dates from a 52 show tour to 146 concerts across five continents to meet demand for her live show.
Swift also managed to crash the website of an unprepared Ticketmaster, after selling more tickets in one day than any other artist in the world. Fans were kept waiting hours in waiting rooms online during the presale and faced severe technical issues. Some even joked they had more chance of getting struck by lightning than getting their hands on the coveted tickets.
The ticketing fiasco led to Ticketmaster being dragged in front of a Senate Committee hearing to answer for its inability to keep up with demand and the almost monopoly it has on live music ticketing.
The movie is also rewriting history behind the scenes, with Swift and her family negotiating directly with AMC to get it on to the big screen rather than going through a traditional Hollywood studio.
Swift's dad, Scott, came up with the "crazy idea" to negotiate with AMC because they had already paid to make the film themselves. It is believed the movie was shot at one of her recent Los Angeles shows.
"It seemed the Swifts had been disappointed in their discussions with a couple of Hollywood studios about distributing a planned concert film of Taylor's current tour," wrote Puck editor Matthew Belloni of the deal.
AMC will get 43 percent of box office takings and Swift will get the remaining 57 percent, according to Belloni's report.
Update 1/9/23, 9:57 a.m. ET: This story was updated to include additional information.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Shannon Power is a Greek-Australian reporter, but now calls London home. They have worked as across three continents in print, ... Read more
