As soon as a concert film based on Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour was announced, it was a foregone conclusion that it was going to be a massive box office hit. More and more it’s looking like the event is going to not simply make giant piles of cash at the box office, but it could have a fundamental impact on the future of theatrical exhibition.
Christopher Nolan, known for his love of movie theaters almost as much as his movies themselves, has said that he thinks Taylor Swift is going to teach the major studios something important about movie theaters. And Fathom Events CEO Ray Nutt is echoing those comments to IndieWire because others are now realizing they don’t need the traditional studio model to get seen. Nutt said…
Our phone’s been ringing off the hook from content providers, because, ‘Oh! We can do something besides just a traditional film in movie theaters?’ Honest to God, after being in the industry this long, when you have something this big, it’s gonna translate to good things.
Taylor Swift has already produced the most theatrically successful concert film in the history of ever, but what’s an even bigger deal from a business standpoint is that she did it without using a traditional studio as a distributor. AMC Theaters distributed the film itself, and the fact that doing that can lead to such success is apparently opening the eyes of many who might have projects that could benefit from a similar model and don’t need to make nearly as much to be successful.
Fathom Events has made a business out of getting smaller projects into theaters for limited release, and many of them have been quite successful. It’s not hard to see that an organization like that would see the Eras Tour movie success as a major benefit for them.
Theatrical distribution has been struggling since the pandemic and is clearly in a period of transition. There is still success to be had, we’ve seen some traditional tentpole movies absolutely own the box office, but there have been fewer of them than we’d seen before. And the theatrical window is now much smaller, with many movies making the jump to streaming platforms much more quickly than they did previously.
It’s possible that won’t change over time, but that theaters will find more business with other forms of content. Not everybody was able to get a ticket to see Taylor Swift live, and even of those that did, many wanted to see it all again. This is just one form of entertainment that could become a big deal in theaters. Change doesn’t always happen quickly, so it could be a while before we really know how Taylor Swift may have changed the game, but it’s quite possible that she has done exactly that.
