Martin Scorsese and Taylor Swift Vie to Fan the Flames of Newfound Box Office Momentum

As predicted, Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour” concert film has provided the box office with some much-needed momentum after “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” finished their theatrical runs. Now, theaters are hoping that Swifties will continue to turn out to theaters this weekend while the legendary Martin Scorsese brings in the cinephiles.

As “Eras Tour” charges into its second weekend, Paramount will release Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” a dark historical epic with a reported $200 million budget from Apple Original Films. Paramount is servicing the theatrical distribution on the film, with Apple holding on to the streaming rights as the film will likely get a release on Apple TV+ to coincide with the 2024 awards calendar.

Partnerships between streamers and distributors with theatrical experience isn’t new. Amazon Studios did this for years through partnerships with the likes of Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions. Streamers have also footed the bill for tentpole-sized budgets on films with legendary directors, as Netflix did for Scorsese’s last film, “The Irishman.”

But while “The Irishman” got a severely abridged theatrical release without the support of major chains, “Killers of the Flower Moon” is getting a full nationwide release. Leonardo DiCaprio and the film’s stars are not promoting the film due to the SAG-AFTRA strike, but Scorsese has spent months, even before his film’s Cannes premiere, not only promoting it but advocating for the preservation of mature cinema in all theaters, not just arthouses.

“Someone must find a way to bring independent films back into the multiplex,” he told theater owners at CinemaCon in April. “It’s going to make a difference to the movies that you show in your theaters in the coming years…one of these people who sees them, whether they’re 19 or 15 or 25, they’ll become artists and novelist and musicians and filmmakers and maybe one of them might make the next blockbuster that will carry theaters and this industry through the next crisis.”

“Killers of the Flower Moon,” with its stacked team of Oscar winners in its cast and crew, and the support of a legacy studio and tech-supported streamer, isn’t exactly anyone’s idea of “independent.” But after Christopher Nolan’s sterling reputation with moviegoers turned the bleak nuclear biopic “Oppenheimer” into a global smash hit, there’s some renewed hope that the mature dramas that have become the exclusive domain of the indie scene may find new life among moviegoers.

That would be great news considering that many prestige titles that addressed tough issues floundered during the last quarter of 2022. But there’s also a chance the success of “Oppenheimer” will not spill over to this fall’s awards hopefuls and that Nolan’s hit was the result of unique attributes and circumstances that cannot be easily replicated, even by a film like “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

The current tracking for “Killers” reflects this, as projections have the film earning a modest $25 million opening weekend. Critical reception, as expected, is strong with a 95% Rotten Tomatoes score, but it’s unclear whether the film’s 206-minute runtime and dark subject matter — the murders of multiple Osage men and women — will inhibit the film’s performance.

A decade ago, Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” grossed $116.9 million domestic and $392 million worldwide. Whether “Killers of the Flower Moon” gets close to that will likely be determined by whether enough moviegoers not interested in Halloween horror or Taylor Swift will be intrigued enough by the strong word-of-mouth to give this film a shot in theaters, rather than wait for it on Apple TV+.

“When you add trailer time and travel time to the theater, going to see a movie this long can be a five-hour commitment,” said Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “That is something that can affect the trajectory of a film’s performance because there are some people who might see a Scorsese film as a can’t-miss movie but can’t carve out the time to see it on opening weekend.”

If the film’s length leaves interested moviegoers needing to make an appointment to watch “Killers of the Flower Moon,” it will take longer for the core audience to come to theaters, especially considering that such an audience might not have as much free time for weeknight moviegoing as they may have had during the summer when “Oppenheimer” came out.

Fortunately, “Killers” has little tentpole competition for the over-35 crowd in the coming weeks now that Warner Bros. has moved “Dune: Part Two” to next spring, while Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon,” also an Apple production, doesn’t come out until Thanksgiving. It won’t be until the third or fourth weekend of the “Killers” run that we can truly see how much theatrical interest Scorsese and DiCaprio bring in 2023.

Meanwhile, theaters are hoping that “The Eras Tour” will have enough replay value among Swift’s hardcore fans to give it box office staying power. While theaters filled up with Swifties this past weekend, demographic reports for the concert film reported that more than 80% were women and more than two-thirds were in the 18-35 range.

The question now is whether Swift’s fans were so delighted by the concert-like experience of seeing the film that they will be interested in buying another ticket for an encore. If so, “The Eras Tour” may perform somewhat similar to “RRR,” last year’s crossover Indian blockbuster that generated viral videos of the film’s fans showing up to theaters to cheer and dance to the film’s action and musical sequences.

But if one viewing is enough for fans, “The Eras Tour” may have a steeper decline than expected and require a recalibration on what these sort of concert films can bring to the marketplace beyond opening weekend. With Beyoncé’s “Renaissance Tour” concert film getting an AMC/Variance release in December, the potential of this new release strategy outside of the Hollywood system is still being determined.

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