Noted horror producer Jason Blum had to give up the coveted Friday, the 13th release date for his horror film The Exorcist: Believer to make way for Taylor Swift’s Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour concert film, which recently became the highest-grossing concert film ever made. Blum and other producers shifted their release dates as the Swift phenomenon took over screens.
Swift’s concert film is having a dream run at the box office, with reports of many fans singing and celebrating the pop star’s songs that are included in the film. However, this has led to the widely reported disturbances for other screenings such as Blum’s The Exorcist: Believer and Martin Scorsese’s Killers of The Flower Moon.
Taylor Swift Had An Unorthodox Release And Distribution Strategy
Since March of this year, pop star Taylor Swift has been going on a global stadium tour in support of all of her versions of the albums she has released recently. Called the ‘Eras Tour’, the concerts encompassed all her musical eras starting with her self-tilted debut album. The tour became the highest-grossing tour ever by a woman and pushed the artist’s net worth to over $1 billion.
Swift planned a film based on the concert along with director Sam Wrench. The film was an independent production between Swift’s own Taylor Swift Productions and Silent House Productions. It had no backing from any of the major American film studios and was hence allowed to be filmed despite the SAG-AFTRA strikes.
Due to ‘disappointing’ talks with the major studios for release, Taylor Swift decided to directly approach the theater chain AMC to release Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour. AMC was set to distribute the concert film with its partner chains and there was no involvement of any distribution studio in the deal.
The model was seen as revolutionary by the media and also led to Swift having more control over her IP. Noted director Christopher Nolan praised her for her unorthodox release model with the theaters. She announced that the concert film would be released on October 13, which surprised many in the industry as it was completely unexpected.
Jason Blum’s Frustration With Taylor Swift Fans
Taylor Swift has one of the largest global fanbases and the surprise announcement of her concert film was welcomed by the ‘Swifties’ with open arms. The film reportedly earned $26 million through pre-sales alone, surpassing the pre-sales earnings of Spider-Man: No Way Home. Online ticketing sales companies compared the demand for the concert film to that of high-profile Marvel and Star Wars films.
The demand and sudden announcement also led to many producers preponing or postponing their release dates. Jason Blum, who planned to release the much-awaited horror film The Exorcist: Believer on October 13 had to prepone the film. While there was some traction on a ‘Barbenheimer’-like cinematic event called ‘Exorswift’, Blum decided to change his release date to October 6.
The producer put out a tweet announcing the postponement while also referring to a popular song by the artist in his caption. He wrote ‘Look what you made me do’. Blum mentioned in an interview with Entertainment Weekly,
“We had this amazing Friday the 13th in October, which is the single best day to release a scary movie. Obviously, we moved off that [date] and we bowed our heads to Taylor Swift. It was too risky to see if ‘Exorswift’ was going to take or not. People will still have the Exorswift opportunity, so maybe we got to have our cake and eat it, too.”
Swift’s concert film ran strong for weeks and many audiences who came for other screenings such as Killers of the Flower Moon complained that they could hear Swift’s songs from other screens as the fans were singing it that loudly.
