This week on Film Center, we talk Taylor! Taylor Swift's concert movie, "The Eras Tour," has become the highest-grossing concert movie ever, surpassing Michael Jackson and Justin Bieber's films. The success is attributed to Taylor Swift's dedicated fan base. However, the movie did not meet projected expectations due to minimal marketing and rowdy theaters. The film targeted a primarily female and white audience, potentially limiting its appeal. By partnering directly with AMC, the movie's reach may have been impacted. Listen in to Film Center News for more!

This is Film Center, your number one show for real entertainment industry news.

No fluff, all facts.

Now, here are your anchors, Derek Johnson II and Nicholas Killian.

Hello, and welcome to Film Center.

My name is Derek Johnson II.

I'm Nicholas Killian.

And what are we talking about today, Nicholas?

Today, we're going to be talking about Taylor Swift's new movie.

Yes, this is interesting because not a lot of celebrities I would

say, I should say musicians, rather.

Musicians.

Release their concerts as movies.

Although it's not the first time, it's not the first time, not a lot of them do

because a lot of them basically need to have a certain following that warrants

that, but Taylor has certainly made a splash, not only in how much was made, but

then also how she went about it, right?

She's being talked about everywhere, everywhere,

regardless, it's quite interesting.

There's a lot of I shall say fans of hers that were unaware.

That football players exist, because a lot of them claimed that she made

a two time Super Bowl winner famous.

That was actually a TikTok trend.

Yeah.

It was like, oh, did you know Taylor Swift really put on this dude?

A lot of, there's a lot of her fans that really believe that,

which obviously was not true.

Because he's a...

Two time Super Bowl champion.

Yeah, he People know who he is.

But anyway, so like we were saying so Taylor Swift's movie just

came out and Actually number one.

It is the highest grossing concert movie of all time.

Now, this is quite shocking because it might also be the highest because

of just how it was promoted when I think of Other celebrities who have

had their tours made into movies.

There's no, there's just not as much.

Not that there's not as much star power, but the marketing for it was a

lot larger than what you usually see.

I also think we live in a time which people are really ready

for those type of movies.

In the past when you hear oh, this is a tour movie most people just ignore it.

And we also can't ignore that.

Taylor Swift is literally the most powerful white woman in the United States.

She's the most powerful Caucasian musician yes.

And I think we underestimate that.

Yeah she has a huge, her followers are very strong.

Devoted and famous.

Just , so like I was saying the heiress tour, so it just came out.

Now, one of the issues with the Taylor Swift heiress tour is that it did not

meet expectations when it came out.

Yeah, like I said before, these type of movies aren't really popular

because they're not really shot like they're documentaries, where

there's a narrative with them.

It's just literally something that people are seeing either

in person or you can see Yeah.

Yeah.

I would say more engaging recordings of on social media and

little bits and pieces, right?

So the thing is Taylor Swift opened to a record of 92.

8 million and 123.

5

million global domestically globally.

October 13th through the 15th.

So that is the highest grossing concert movie to exist, far exceeding.

Michael Jackson's, this is It, and Justin Beaver's.

Never Say Never.

So Michael Jackson domestically grossed $72 million and globally

grossed $74.3 million in 2009.

Now are, we're talking a box office here and not DVD sales.

Box office, first of all, tailored.

Taylor Swift's concert is not out long enough to even be have

DVD sales in the first place.

So this is just over a period of two days.

That's incredible.

That's, that is very impressive.

Especially I think because People are comparing it to other movies.

They expected that kind of, that, those kind of aspirations.

But for what it is, it still made a large chunk of money.

Oh, it made more money than all of the other ones.

Now one of the things that is not talked about, or we haven't talked about it

yet, is the fact that Probably one of the reasons why it didn't make as much

as it was projected to, which was Taylor Swift kind of went around the movie

industry and just went straight to AMC?

Yeah, I think if she went, woulda went with a now AMC is just the movie theaters.

I think if she mighta woulda partnered with a larger distributor they woulda

put her in more theaters, obviously.

Equally more money.

I'm not saying that she wasn't in theaters nationwide But obviously

the studios have a bigger reach.

This is their wheelhouse here, right?

And it also makes you wonder what prevented her from doing that I would

say probably so that we should keep more of the money which makes sense.

But it's weird to not hear a big star like Taylor at least use her

label as a means of distribution.

I mean if she had went through the appropriate channels, I mean

she could have At least gone 150 million just off of this weekend.

I mean she partnered directly with AMC Her and her team bypassed the whole

Hollywood studio system like we were saying now One another reason why It could

have come in under budget was the film's target audience is relatively narrow.

Yeah, that's true.

Her target audience is it's different than actors where when someone's a regular

not a regular actor Someone's an a list actor and they're in a movie, right?

You have two types of really audiences you're going for people who are

several types audiences Actually going for people who like the actor one

people who are fans of the job like it's a jumanji for example, right?

Okay, you're going for people who are fans of Kevin Hart this one audience

people are fans of the rock, right?

People are fans of Jack black.

They have people who are fans of the original IP then you also have fans who

are People who are fans of that genre people who, they just need, they just want

a good family movie at the end of the day.

These tour movies haven't been haven't been as popular as other movies

specifically because they're only geared towards this one artist's fan.

No casual moviegoer is going to go to this.

According to Post Trax, 79 percent of the audience for the heiress tour was

female and 70 percent of it was male.

Of that 79 percent were white and the other percentage

is their boyfriends, right?

Or whoever there's, whoever they drug, drug to the movie.

Additionally, only 18 percent of the audience was 35 or older.

And this is according to post track this suggests that the broad audience

might have been reached with a more traditional marketing campaign, like we

said, with Taylor Swift's idea to go with.

AMC's unauthorized unorthodox release strategy.

What's quite interesting is that a lot of the news I've heard about

this is mostly been word of mouth.

I have not, it could also be because.

The YouTube algorithm and whatever social media algorithms don't really pander me a

black male to Taylor Swift stuff, right?

But at the same time we keep our finger on the pulse when it comes to a lot of

marketing and a lot of PR, and I have not seen a lot of advertisement for her.

That is not just straight up word of mouth.

But here's the thing though isn't word of mouth the best form of advertising

not if you want to get to everyone I mean it word of mouth is the most

Validated advertising that's why they say it's quote unquote the best because

you'll believe them more, right?

but it's not the best one to get it out there if I if everyone in this entire

neighborhood knew me Where we are, right?

This entire complex.

They all knew me.

And I walked outside and screamed at the top of my lungs like, oh, hey,

Taylor Swift's movie is the best, right?

And everyone heard me and everyone believed me.

It's still not as powerful as releasing, something to Variety.

I will tell you this.

If you came and told me you're like Nicholas, you have got to

watch the Taylor Swift movie.

If you told me that, I'd be like, okay, there's something in this

movie that I have to go see.

Yeah, but that's, I'm not in the demographic at all.

So if you come to me and you're like, bro, you got to see this movie.

I'll be like.

Man, I gotta see this movie.

This is not the target demographic.

Yeah, not at all.

You know what's interesting is that no one has actually told me to see

the movie probably for that reason.

I don't think, I don't think Derek could be interested in in this movie.

One of the things that might have also put off moviegoers or casual moviegoers

who are not Taylor Swift fans, who are affectionately referred to as Swifties

is that the film's rowdy Atmosphere might have put off some moviegoers the rowdy

atmosphere, you know I heard a lot about this is a lot of videos on social media

about their her fans acting wild the thing is Swift and AMC encouraged fans

to Basically make this seem like this is the actual concert that they're at

they were encouraged to sing and dance during the film right, so If you just

happen to be a casual Taylor Swift fan and you're like, Oh wow, I didn't get to

go see the heiress tour because I didn't have tickets or they were too expensive.

So I'll just go watch the movie and you've got, five 16 year

olds Screaming their head off.

Oh my god, it's Taylor!

25 year olds that are, dancing and singing.

You might.

And because of the word of mouth, you were like, yeah, I was going

to go see that movie and you're like, Oh, don't go do that.

There's just a, there's a bunch of tweens just screaming at the top of the lungs.

Yeah.

Making this seem like it's a, it's an actual concert, which

is what it was built to be.

It's this is.

This is, it comes from AMC's part of being out of touch a little so they're

a little bit out of touch with the movie culture and here in America, there are

other movie cultures in which screaming and yelling and all of our, there's

a lot of movie cultures out there that were, that's really appropriate.

For example if you ever seen a Talgo movie over in India, it's a language.

Oh there's a place called a tollywood.

You have bollywood.

There's tollywood What is tollywood?

It's it's a it's like bollywood, but it's an is an india and they speak.

They talgo Oh, really?

Yes.

Tolga was not a location.

It's a language over there that they speak.

And many Indian theaters, they enjoy laughing and screaming and like all

the, they enjoy being loud and being able to express themselves and enjoy

the movie like you would at home.

I'm like, Oh, and you're like talking to the movie and all

that's awesome and stuff like that.

But how many times in America, when you're watching a movie that's the general

culture That is the culture that we, you know, when I say we, the American

collective have used for hundreds of, for at least the hundred years that film has

been around to say this is what you're supposed to be in a theater because it

is akin to what we did for plays, right?

People were quiet in the theater for plays theater, not, theater

meaning, plays and musicals and stuff like that so people can hear.

So now we train our American culture to do the same thing with cinema.

And so then you have this change where they want you to just

get up and start screaming.

Some people might be off put by that.

If you are used to movie theaters being quiet, and everyone just

starts screaming their head off, you're gonna be upset by that.

We've all been in situations where there's a crying baby.

And you don't just say Oh!

That's okay.

A lot of people are pretty annoyed by it, also, we also have to understand that

this movie is almost three hours long.

Yes, it's a It's two hours and forty eight minutes long.

So imagine this.

I know you we've both been in situations when we're watching a movie,

like when we go see Gran Turismo.

And you can hear some of the screen from next door.

In the other theater you can hear an ah or who ever so often right something exciting

happens over there Or you can sometimes hear laughter just a little bit right or

sometimes you can hear a little of the other scream Now imagine you're hearing

just straight up screaming the whole time while you're trying to enjoy your movie

Why are you trying to enjoy your movie that has nothing to do with taylor swift?

I can see that being pretty annoying and a lot of people discouraging others to be

like hey look like this movie was It was too much Yeah, and then also the thing is

it's not the moviegoers fault technically they are being encouraged to do this they

are just actually following the rules and the thing is you sit there and you

say, uniques role as both distributor and exhibitor I mean there was bound to be

Some hard feelings We're part of studios who could have commanded a distribution

fee of anywhere from 8 to 15 So that's where the topic of they were potentially,

leaving millions on the table in part to the unorthodox way of of going around,

of going about distributing the movie.

I also think that part of it is, part of it might have also been good control.

Yes, she would have had a lot more money, right?

But I guarantee you They would have made her change some aspects of the movie

just because executives always have notes well, it's funny that you say that

because I don't know if you remember this, but you remember when Andrew

Schultz came out with his Comedy special.

Yes, right and it was a big deal for him because he was going to release

it on one of the major platforms.

I think it was Netflix.

And there were some jokes in there that Netflix wanted Andrew to take out and was

like, if you don't take out these jokes, then we're not going to put it on Netflix.

And he was sitting there man, they're going to offer me all this money, but

they want me to take out these jokes.

What do I do?

And so he said, Ultimately, what he ended up doing was he ended up just releasing

the whole special on YouTube, right?

He just released the whole thing on youtube And he was like I was really

nervous about it because there's no guarantee that i'm going to make the

money I would make If I just gave it to netflix, but then that would mean

I would have to compromise My artist's integrity of the jokes that I really

wanted to tell there's a huge rise right now and Creator integrity, right?

Okay, I made my art, especially people who are professionals.

These are not people who are new and they're trying to express themselves.

These are quote unquote seasoned celebrity veterans, right?

Who know what their fans want.

And really any kind of notes that you're giving, if they're not helpful, a lot of

times they're just, check boxes so that way they can be on whoever's platform.

And so Taylor Swift and Andrew Schultz in that example were both

like my fan base is large enough to where I think I know what I'm doing.

What what do you think, as somebody who has, as somebody quite like

myself who has your pulse on the industry, what do you think that this

is, this movie is going to clear?

It's already grossed over a hundred million dollars just over the weekend.

Yeah, but I Do you think it's going to drop off a cliff or what do you

I do based on, now it's spike is a lot higher than I expected it to be.

But I do believe it's not going to last as long, mainly because of A, the prior

history of tour movies, and B, when it comes to entertainment like this everyone

wants to know what's the newest album or what's the newest tour or anything like

that the movies Narrative movies, and even documentaries they're more about the

story, you know what I'm saying, something you can hear again and again, right?

A lot of people don't watch tours again and again.

People watch comedy specials a lot, because they like to re hear the jokes.

But, most people, if they want to, instead of hearing it at the concert, a lot of

times they'll just listen to the album.

It's not something you would re watch the movie of.

The replayability of it is low.

I would say that, for most movies, there is some level of re watch replayability.

But, even for narratives and documentaries, but Do you think that,

do you think that this movie was, I, cause it was my understanding

that this movie was put out for the people who couldn't get tickets to

the Ares Tour and watch it as it is.

If that's all this is, just for people who just couldn't get

tickets, then it's phenomenal.

It's a phenomenal success, right?

But if you're just comparing it to being a movie, comparing it

to other movies, not as much.

Now, it's...

AMC kind of...

positioned this movie as like an exclusive with AMC.

Do you think that was a huge, that was a mistake?

Do you think that they left millions of dollars on the table?

Not the reason why they left the money on the table is because of the goal.

If your goal...

Is to say, okay this is for all the people who didn't get to see my concert.

And then you only released the AMC thing.

Yes.

That's a missed opportunity.

So I'll give you an example.

I'm from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and a little backstory Taylor Swift

used to go to my rival high school.

And briefly, a lot of teachers who went to my high school taught

Taylor Swift when she went there.

It's interesting that, there's a little, not that I know Taylor Swift,

but her ex boyfriend, we did know her.

He wasn't our we did know him.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You knew Taylor Swift's ex boyfriend back in high school?

Yeah.

When he came, when she came back for one of our tours to Nashville,

we bought him tickets because we thought it was hilarious.

But that is another story.

Mainly why I bring this up is because that is a town that she lived in

Nashville, the Nashville area.

Mercerville's Nashville area.

Up until I want to say six years ago, we didn't have an AMC in Murdsboro.

You know what we had?

We had a Carmack Cinemas.

What's a Carmack Cinemas?

Exactly.

We're at Carmack Cinemas, right?

If you want to distribute your movie to all tons of people who haven't

seen it, especially, And, now there's an AMC in Nashville, right?

But not in Murfreesboro, which is in the Nashville area still.

We're still area code 615.

And that's a country musical capital of the world, even though she's viewed

more as a pop star now, that's still like, where she claims that she's from.

She's actually from Pennsylvania.

Air it out, DJ!

I'm not gonna tell all of her business, but, basically, I think that she

should've did a different deal.

With Carmack Cinemas, a different deal with Regal's Cinemas, and AMC,

and just had non exclusive deals.

Because if the goal is to spread it wide, then spread it wide, right?

But you can't say, oh, this is the idea, if you're only going with one of them.

AMC, don't get me wrong, is the biggest distributor at movie theater, right now.

Right now.

But...

I'm not going to say that Regal Cinemas is nothing.

You know what I'm saying?

Like they're quite large themselves.

Maybe you didn't want to do Carmack cinemas.

Merceril has an AMC now, but I'm just saying.

You never know, right?

If that was the point to spread wide, then why wouldn't you go wide?

And it was just to, to me personally, I feel like this whole thing was just

like, oh, hey, we felt like we could make some extra dollars, which also explains

why she didn't go through the usual channels to make those multi millions.

They're just like, eh, we just want a little bit more money.

We don't want all the headache of all that other stuff.

Do you, are you surprised that she didn't do something for the town

that she claims that she was from?

Because that could be like a huge selling point of because she's thought of as

like this hometown girl and, if she went back to, where she claims she's

from, that could be a huge selling point for her movie and her image.

So I went to Siegel High School and our ex boyfriend went to Siegel.

She went to you see the Riverdale or Oakland, but when she was in

Murfreesboro, a lot of the teachers at Siegel was still like new, it was a

young school when I went there, right?

So a lot of teachers that we had taught her.

And I will have to say Murfreesboro is not the type of place where you would.

That you're gonna get a lot of press at from celebrating.

You're gonna get way more press from celebrating Nashville than

you're gonna get from Mercerville.

Mercerville just doesn't have the population for that, even though that

could be something that she would pitch.

But once again, she's not from Tennessee.

She's from Pennsylvania.

So it's pros and cons.

I honestly though, I honestly...

Since I live here in Los Angeles, there could have been some specific

targeting in Nashville that I just missed because I lived over here.

Also, the one thing that I would bring up that I'd want to get your opinion on is,

like we know, the Variety is reporting that a week before ARIS opened, AMC

issued a press release announcing that worldwide advanced pre sales, Climb past a

hundred million dollars across everywhere.

Now you just said that you think that basically you said that you think that

this concert movie is a bit top heavy.

Yeah.

Think about it like this.

So you have all of these pre sales that were done, right?

Okay.

Pre sales and what it's grossing, that should be.

Those overlap could you explain so if those of you don't know a pre sale is

basically a ticket that's bought before it's come out Yeah it's more specifically

there are Estimates that come out like when you're making a movie, for example,

you need funding you're like, okay this is the new Jurassic Park movie, right Bank.

Give me some money because I know I'm gonna make at least x

millions of dollars in pre-sales.

Because it's such a large ip, your will makes, you're almost guaranteed

some money with those pre-sales.

But in this instance, with these pre-sales, what they mean

is literally people buying the tickets for it before it comes out.

Much like I did when event for every Avengers movie actually , every

ev, every Avengers movie, right?

They were but you can't say that it's like, If I buy, let's say I'm going to

the Nicholas movie, okay, and I buy a ticket, I pre, I have a ticket before

it comes out, for 20 I buy a ticket, that's a pre sale before the movie comes

out but then, when I go see the movie, and then I use that ticket, it still

counts as the 20, you're gonna say, oh now I grossed now we just got 20.

Okay you can't, you don't have 40.

It's the same 20 from the pre sale that it is, can calculate into the gross.

Okay, and then one another thing that I would ask you is what do

you find about the non refundable tickets that was the huge issue

with the quote unquote Swifties?

I would've done the same thing, especially because like I said, this movie to me

was just seemed like it was just to get a little extra money on the side.

It really wasn't to be a big movie to compete with the other movies.

It wasn't really made, and especially cause if you're only looking to make a

little extra money, based off of some people who just wanted to go there, I

would like this plan makes total sense.

I'm not gonna go through Universal or some other like large CD distributor

that would probably love to have it for billions of dollars because

that's a huge headache unto itself, and the concert date is coming up.

It's a lot easier for me to say, Hey, movie theaters, I'm famous.

People are going to come by it, here, take my movie.

It's a lot easier to do it that way than it is to do these long

contracts with the larger studios.

On top of the fact that.

It's non refundable because it's like buying a ticket, because you feel like

you're actually seeing the concert, which is part of the reason why AMC

probably encourages fans to act like they were actually at a concert.

A lot of concert tickets are non refundable.

And then one of the things that I would ask you, because I agree with

you, but one of the things that I would ask you is, Taylor Swift's fan

base includes plenty of adults, right?

Do you think, like we were just talking about, do you think that not only the

noise and dancing and all that kind of stuff, do you think that the older

people who are fans of Taylor Swift were intimidated to go to the movie?

To be fair, it's not really for older people as messed up as that sounds.

Like her target demographic is not for older fans.

She does like any musician has older fans, right?

Now the longer ago the musician was popular, the older the fan base, right?

Taylor Swift is relevant today, right?

Her fan base is, it's still quite young.

She does have older fans from 10 years ago, but and they have their

own kids now and stuff like that.

But facts remain that she's still relevant today, obviously, right?

So she has she's only gotten more relevant year over year, right?

So it's not really made for the older crowd.

I would even I would doubt it would even go see this movie

Like, it's just not something that they would be interested in.

I would never, it's not like, when Michael Jackson's the one, Michael

Jackson's a, this is it, right?

Michael Jackson is from that older generation, right?

So I can see people of an older generation going to the theaters.

Taylor Swift.

She's youth, you know what I'm saying?

She's young, her fans are young it's not really for the older generations.

So it's not that they were off put by it, I just don't think

they would feel like going.

Once again, it's a lot easier just to listen to the album

than deal with all that.

What I also think it is it's also disposable income.

There's a reason why the 18 to 25, the 18 to 30 is like the golden ratio of group

of people you want to target because they're the ones, especially the younger

ones, who have the most disposable income.

That's true.

But anyway, what do you have any takeaways for...

I think that whoever does the next concert movie look at how

Taylor Swift made her money.

This obviously worked for her.

Maybe it wasn't the millions and millions compared to other movies, but they

definitely got something out of it.

And I doubt that she will not do this again.

She probably will do this several more times.

She, it's proven that it makes a ton of money.

And I foresee like almost...

Every other artist copying her.

Anyway this has been Film Cinder.

I'm Nicholas Killian.

I'm Dara Johnson II.

And we'll see y'all later.

See ya.

This has been Film Center on Comic Con Radio.

Check out our previous episodes at FilmCenterNews.

com.

Sign up for our newsletter and get the Hollywood trade straight to you.

You can follow the show at Film Center News on all major platforms.

Tune in next week for a fresh update.

Until next time, this has been Film Center.

Hey, do you like anime and manga?

Nick and I are...

Big fans of the genre.

Yeah.

We recently discovered a manga named Thomas.

She, it's written and created by Ryan McCarthy, and it recently just

came out with its 10th volume now, Thomas, she is an is Kai about a

girl who gets transported to another world called the Ancient Lands.

She gains mysterious powers and must fight demons and monsters.

To find her way home.

Check it out on global comics.com or Ryan McCarthy productions.com

and that's Global Comics with an x.