There is only Taylor Swift, but the monster success of „The Eras Tour“ opens the door to a new age of concert films.
Hollywood loves to repeat success, and now more than ever it needs to. If there’s a promising way to draw people into movie theaters that the industry doesn’t capitalize on, it will only be colluding in the decay of its own future. So when I came out of “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” having experienced, for the first time in a while, what it was like a share a concert film with an ecstatic audience, one of my first thoughts was, “How could they do this again?”
You might say that’s a silly question, since it has one obvious answer: They can’t. There is only one Taylor Swift, the most epic global pop superstar since the Michael Jackson of the “Thriller” era. And there is only one Taylor Swift fan base. Until “The Eras Tour,” no concert movie in history has made this kind of money (though “Woodstock,” which took in $34.5 million in 1970 dollars, came closer than you might think). And maybe no concert movie of the future ever will. Even as the monster success of “The Eras Tour” has been the financial savior of the fall movie season, it would be easy to celebrate that success and still consider it a fantastic anomaly.
But I think the real answer to “How could they do this is again?” is actually, “There are several ways.” Yes, there is only one Taylor Swift. But there is also only one Beyoncé, and she’s got her own concert film, “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé,” opening Dec. 1. It should prove a major draw, if not quite in that Taylorsphere next level. Beyond Beyoncé, there’s more than one strategy to bring pop-music performance films back into theaters in a way that helps the industry and redefines the concert movie as a thriving genre.
There are 52 weeks in a year, and every one of those weeks that features a wide-release movie that people are lining up to see goes into the plus column of sustaining the theatrical experience. Sometimes that smash #1 release of the week is a Marvel adventure, or a “Fast and Furious” or Bond or “Jurassic Park” or “Mission: Impossible” thriller, or some other franchise blockbuster. Sometimes it’s an animated fantasy, or a bloodbath horror film that pushes enough buttons to connect. Sometimes it’s even a movie, like “Oppenheimer,” that critics love. In that light, I propose the following: For two or three of those 52 weeks, why couldn’t the hit release of the week be a concert film that legions of fans are excited enough to come out and see?
One obvious answer is: That hasn’t happened in quite a while.
