From Shane Conto

When we look to see what the biggest box office winner will be this October, you might be shocked to see. It will not be any of the big horror films that are arriving for the Halloween season. We have franchises coming back like The Exorcist and Saw while Five Nights at Freddy’s is getting its first bit screen adaptation. Then we have legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese returning to the theater after a few years with his towering western epic about the systematic murdering of the Osage people, Killers of the Flower Moon. But the big winner will be pop sensation herself, Taylor Swift. 

Why is The Eras Tour going to make such a big splash? Film is not the only big time entertainment art in society. The music industry is a multi-billion dollar industry with some artists making vast fortunes from Beyonce to Jay-Z to Taylor Swift. The NFL even wants to capitalize on just how popular Swift is that they shamelessly plaster her relationship with Kansas Chiefs Tight End Travis Kelce all over prime time television. Music is a medium that strikes emotions deeply and can move us in unique ways. Its effects are essential to the art of film as well. When you have a beloved form of art and its most popular artist doing a special event coming to theaters, it is no surprise that it can make a massive splash. 

But why is this phenomenon so significant? This concert film can change the film industry fundamentally thanks to who is NOT making money from this endeavor. The studios. This new deal has been struck between Swift and the theaters. The theaters will make a decent chunk of the box office (generally more than they would one a regular film) and Swift will make the other large chunk which will only enlarge her impressive music wealth (especially for a 33 year old). The pre-sales on The Eras Tour have already surpassed Avengers: Infinity War…that is insane. They could be making $100 million plus on their opening weekend.  This is one of the biggest opening weekends of the year and the studios will not make a penny on it. In a time where they are tied up in strikes and the pandemic almost puts exhibition theaters out of business, this is a game changer. And this will not be the last. Beyonce has already jumped on this model as she will be arriving in theaters in December with her own concert film. 

What does this mean for the future of theaters? There can be a lot that comes from this Swift/theaters collaboration. We already get Opera recordings shown in theaters but can you imagine some of the biggest shows on Broadway coming into theaters in a timely manner? Hamilton would have been a massive theater hit since that musical took the whole country by storm but only so many people can make the journey to New York City. Showing a recording in theaters is also considerably more affordable. Similar to a concert, stage shows are no inexpensive form of entertainment. But this expansion into cinema can create a whole new world of appreciation of “live” music and performances that are accessible and affordable. More importantly, these are new ways for theaters to make money without having to be under the thumb of the big movie studios. 

But let’s flip this from the expansion and growth of theaters to the systematic shock that will come to the movie industry. What could be the effects? Studios might have to meet theaters more at the center. If the production studios have a new found competition for screens, they may have to surrender more of their money to the theaters to get to those exhibition media. Let’s say that studios want to continue to deliver their projects on the big screen. If they are going to be making less and surrendering more to the theaters, they may have to focus even more on spectacle cinema…but make them more efficiently. A film like The Creator looked like a blockbuster but only cost a fraction of some films like Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part I ($80 million compared to $290 million). The Creator might not have grabbed the attention of audiences but it showed you can go big without bloating your budget. Studios might need to take this lesson and run with it to make sure they can maximize their budgets. 

Studios might need to invest in other forms of entertainment, right? They might want to make the leap into producing these other forms of entertainment. Collaborating with musical artists and Broadway producers to bring these forms of entertainment to theaters might be a big part of their future. But that may be challenging when the artists and theaters are making a nice cut of the gross themselves without the help of studios.  They might invest in creators so that they can cut into this equation. Expanding into producing for musicians or working closer with the music labels that may already be under the same umbrella at their company. 

There is a more realistic and unfortunate shift that might happen, right? If studios lose ground in one medium of film exhibition, they might have to turn to the growing medium that brings the films directly to your own screens…streaming. I am sure that many film lovers would hate to see film shift closer to being streaming heavy but if The Eras Tour turns out to be as successful as it can be, this can truly be a seismic shift. If films are not making enough money and they lose those screens, they will have to find them somewhere. Streaming has already taken a big chunk of cinema to home platforms thanks to the pandemic but this can possibly push it as the primary medium to present film to audiences. Imagine seeing Avengers on Disney+ as an initial release. Or maybe The Fast and the Furious on Peacock. We know what that was like thanks to the Warner Bros experiment back in 2021 and that certainly was a strange and shocking experience. But it could be less strange and become a staple of the film experience. 

Will this new venture for Swift really make a change? We will have to wait and see. But there tends to be quite the reactionary approach to change when it comes to movies and theaters so there just might be a big shift. I could just mean more concert films or so much more. Time will tell as Swift, Beyonce, and theaters count their money.

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