Taylor Swift Eras Tour outperforms Scorsese film in theaters

Taylor Swift's record-breaking Eras Tour concert film outperformed Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon at the box office this weekend in the latter's theatrical premiere.

Yahoo Finance Entertainment Reporter Alexandra Canal reports on the continued success of the Eras Tour film and Taylor Swift's influence across industries, such as the boost to Travis Kelce jersey sales after her appearances at Kansas City Chief's games.

Click here to watch the full interview on the Yahoo Finance YouTube page or you can watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live here.

Video Transcript

BRAD SMITH: Taylor Swift is maintaining her crown as queen of the box office this weekend after Martin Scorsese's "Killers of the Flower Moon" failed to knock her out of that first place spot. Apple's Western crime film took the second spot at $23 million, with Swift's "Eras Tour" concert film bringing in another $31 million domestically. Yahoo Finance's Alexandra Canal and resident Yahoo Finance Taylor Swift expert. I'll just give you that title. Why not.

ALEXANDRA CANAL: Not.

BRAD SMITH: You've got all the details on this. Allie, what do we know?

ALEXANDRA CANAL: Yeah, Taylor Swift, as a fellow Swift team, she's still number one at the box office. However, "Killers of the Flower Moon", not such a bad start, considering this was a period piece, considering we still have the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike. A lot of these actors unable to promote their projects. But this film, it's going to have to make up some serious ground if it wants to be profitable.

Apple paid an estimated 200 million before marketing costs on this movie. Some estimates have that even higher at 250 million. But with the backing from Apple, which doesn't necessarily ride or die on the theatrical successes of its film, it might not be such a big deal. Apple, of course, is heavily leaned in to the box office, committing $1 billion to theatrical exclusives set for release later this year and in the future, matching the likes of Amazon.

We have a few other titles from Apple coming out later this fall, which will also be exclusive to the box office. And it's a strategy that's really different from some of those competitors in the space, like Netflix, for example. Netflix has really stressed that they want to make Netflix movies for Netflix consumers. So we'll have to wait and see how the rest of Apple's theatrical releases perform and whether or not that will convince Netflix to perhaps change up its strategy there.

But just going back to Taylor Swift's "Eras Tour" movie. I mean, this was a film that came out of absolutely nowhere. And although the audience did drop off pretty significantly from the debut to weekend. number two. The fact that it's still ruled at number one is very impressive. Year to date, the overall box office is sitting at just under 87 million, which is about 24% lower compared to where we were at this point last year.

But this movie, this concert experience, it is helping to boost those numbers and could be exactly what theaters need to try and reach its goal of $9 billion in domestic ticket sales by the end of this year. So we'll see. I mean, Taylor Swift, the kids love her these days. And they're continuing to go out and show their support at theaters.

SEANA SMITH: Allie, they could certainly do love her. It's been remarkable how many fans went out early and bought these tickets, how many have shown up at the theaters here over the last two weekends. When we talk about how sticky though this model is, it's something that you and I and Brad have talked about in the past.

Are we learning anything different just in terms of what we could expect, maybe the strategy for some of these bigger names within the music industry, how they could potentially approach a deal like this with some of the movie chains?

ALEXANDRA CANAL: Yeah. And it's interesting to look at the "Eras Tour" movie in particular because it's only available to see on the weekends. So it's not like a normal box office film, where you could see it on a weekday on a Monday or Tuesday. This is only for the weekends.

We do have Beyonce's Renaissance Tour also coming out to theaters later this year in December. So that'll be interesting to see how that performs, considering it's a little bit more documentary style, where Taylor Swift it's truly the concert experience. You were up. You were dancing in your seats.

But like I said, that drop off between week 1 and week 2 was pretty significant. I think it was over 60% less. And that's usually what you see with big box office films as well. And the more people go and see this movie, obviously the hardcore fans they have already seen it right at the front there.

So we'll see how sticky and how long this could actually last. But you're seeing that the lack of competition at the box office right now is really helping this movie stay at number one and at a time when we really don't have a lot of other titles. It's very welcoming I think to the box office to have something like this to lean on.

BRAD SMITH: That "Beyonce Renaissance Tour" film Allie, I can't wait for that personally. I might have to show up to the theater wearing a gingham top, some crochet pants, and some platform shoes. I don't know. It's going to be a cheat train all over again. I can't wait. Yeah.

ALEXANDRA CANAL: Amazing.

SEANA SMITH: A real visual with that one.

BRAD SMITH: I mean, it's going to need to be a team trip. We all got to do it.

SEANA SMITH: All right. It could be a lot of fun. I'm telling you, so I haven't gone to see Taylor Swift's concert at the theaters yet, but I've seen a heck of a lot of posts on it on social media. And it looks like a ton of fun. So I get why so many people are so excited and going out even though if they saw the concert, they're going to the theaters to check it out one more time. All right, Allie. Thanks.