Taylor Swift's dad may have just shaken up Hollywood thanks to his deal with AMC theaters to screen her Eras World Tour concert film.
Swift and AMC surprised everyone on Thursday by announcing a concert movie of her record-breaking world tour would hit theaters in the U.S., Canada and Mexico on October 13. Tickets went on sale after the announcement.
"The Eras Tour has been the most meaningful, electric experience of my life so far and I'm overjoyed to tell you that it'll be coming to the big screen soon," Swift wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
AMC described it as a "new line of business," with details emerging of how Swift's father, Scott Swift, bypassed traditional Hollywood studios to distribute the film and negotiated a deal directly with AMC and Cinemark to screen it.
Scott reportedly contacted AMC CEO Adam Aron with a "crazy idea" a few months ago, according to a report on entertainment news site Puck.
"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.
Scott, a former stock broker, came up with the idea that rather than relying on a Hollywood studio to produce the film and distribute it to cinemas, the Swifts would go straight to the source.
But because the Swifts had paid to make the film themselves and hired Sam Wrench to direct it, they could cut out the middle-man and do the distribution deal themselves. The film reportedly cost between $10 million to $20 million to produce and was filmed at one of her L.A. concerts.
The Eras Tour started in March and has already grossed $1.4 billion. Swift extended the run from 52 to 146 shows across five continents.
The tour is on track to make an anticipated $2 billion and is already the highest grossing live music tour of all time.
By dealing directly with AMC, the Swifts cut down on a lot of expenses and stand to make more money because they are now the only two parties who will share in the profit of the film. According to Belloni's report, AMC will get 43 percent of box office takings and Swift will get the remaining 57 percent.
The movie will play in AMC, Cinemark and Regal theaters around the country—which is more than 1,000 in the U.S. alone—and there will be four screenings a day between Thursdays and Sundays at every AMC cinema in the country. They also agreed that cinemas will be allowed to play the film for up to 26 weeks, meaning both parties stand to make a lot of money.
Newsweek contacted AMC and Taylor Swift's publicist for comment.
It is anticipated the Eras Tour concert film made $30 million on the first day of sales which would smash the previous record held by Avengers: Endgame which earned $16 million.
The deal will likely anger major Hollywood studios because it has the potential to rewrite the rules of movie distribution, with pundits already asking who might be next to follow in Swift's footsteps.
Belloni was looking to Beyoncé as a possible choice, given she is at the tail end of her own record-breaking tour, the Renaissance World Tour. Beyoncé has also produced and directed her own concert films in the past, through her production company and record label Parkwood Entertainment.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Shannon Power is a Greek-Australian reporter, but now calls London home. They have worked as across three continents in print, ... Read more
