Beyoncé and Taylor Swift's combined powers have "literally" helped salvage one of the country's largest cinema chains.
AMC revealed that its huge jump in revenue in 2023's fourth quarter was solely down to the concert movies Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour and Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé.
The two musicians released the concert movies of their respective record-smashing world tours within weeks of each other, starting with Swift's Eras in October. They managed to not only rewrite the rules of cinema distribution with the releases, but also boosting AMC's fortunes in the process.
"Despite a diminished box office overall, in the fourth quarter compared to the same quarter a year ago, AMC's revenue grew by 11.5 percent and AMC's adjusted EBITDA almost tripled. Literally, all of that increase... is attributable to our having shown these two movies in our theatres in the U.S. and internationally," the company's CEO Adam Aron said during AMC Entertainment's quarterly earning call.
"These two movies added greatly to movie theatre ticket sales across our entire industry, as just these two films represented fully one-ninth of the complete fourth quarter domestic industry-wide box office."
Aron added: "This is a stunning result given that neither of these films were on anyone's drawing board until mid-year, and that they were the first movies ever distributed by AMC in our entire 103-year history."
The CEO said his praise for the women "has no limit" and he offers "boundless thanks to these two world-class artists."
The movie theater business is still trying to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, which saw cinemas close down for months on end.
AMC also revealed that for 2023 its total revenue grew 23 percent compared to 2022, which Aron said reflected "another full year of continued meaningful recovery from the aftermath of the 2020 pandemic."
Both artists produced and distributed their concert movies, by negotiating directly with AMC and cutting out the costly middle-man of a traditional Hollywood studio.
AMC described it as a "new line of business, and shared in 43 percent of the profits, with Swift getting the remaining 57 percent.
"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 when the deal was revealed in October.
According to Aron, Swift's dad, Scott Swift came up with the "crazy idea" to deal directly with AMC to distribute the Eras movie.
Her movie smashed multiple box office records, including selling $26 million on the first day of advanced ticket sales, smashing the previous record held by Avengers: Endgame at $16 million.
It made $92 million in its first weekend and became the highest-grossing domestic concert film of all time over that time period.
Renaissance made almost $22 million on its opening weekend and grossed $44 million globally during its 12-week run, according to Box Office Mojo.
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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
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