It’s been a long time coming, but Taylor Swift finally did it. As of Aug. 31, Taylor Nation, Swift’s marketing team, announced “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” as a movie. This comes after Grammy award winner Taylor Swift officially ended her first United States tour leg, called the Eras Tour. Taylor toured over 100 cities in the span of five months, performing for three hours with 44 songs, plus two surprise songs. According to PBS, the gross profit from the tour was over $1 billion.
On Aug. 9, Taylor Swift announced her re-introduction of her classic album “1989” during a concert at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Cali. Back in 2019, Swift was working with record producer Scooter Braun. “He sold her first six albums for an investment fund of over 300 million dollars, which he largely kept for himself,” according to Newsweek. After this, she signed with Republic Records, and has been claiming her music back. This effort includes “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version),” which was released in July.
The Eras tour was attended by an average of 72,459 per show, according to CNN, with venues so crowded they often resorted to floor seating. One Franklin student said she loved the experience in Seattle, however, the heat and long lines were a downside. The performance in Seattle was reported to “cause seismic activity equivalent to a 2.3 magnitude earthquake,” according to CNN. Lumen Field, a stadium in Seattle, announced a total number of 77,286 people for Swift’s first performance. According to STR, a travel booking company, hotel bookings in Seattle spiked 80% on July 22, up from the same time last year when hotel bookings were at just 38% — all attributed to the Eras Tour.
“[The Eras Tour] has been predicted to be the highest-grossing in history” writes KQTV ABC. She sold two million tickets within 24 hours of release; which caused the Ticketmaster website to crash and sent “resale prices through the roof,” according to PBS. Swift gave massive bonuses to everyone on her tour, including dancers, truck drivers, and caterers, totaling over $55 million.
The concerts are all anyone can talk about. “[They were extremely fun and colorful, everyone was so nice,” an anonymous Swiftie claims. The concerts ranged from Tokyo all the way down to Mexico. Yet Taylor isn’t done, as she has announced upcoming concerts throughout Europe. This will be her seventh concert tour, with the second leg of the Eras Tour coming in 2024. “The European leg will kick off on May 9, 2024 in Paris, and wrap up on Aug. 17, 2024 in London,” according to Americana UK.
Her fans are clearly willing to support Swift through anything. Merch lines wrapped around venues, and fans rushed to her websites to buy CDs, records, and posters. Pollstar estimated that Swift could even surpass $1 billion during her six-show run in Singapore, set to take place in March 2024. Concert executives told The Journal that the Eras Tour could gross an additional $2 million dollars through merchandise sold at each stop. With the announcement of the re-release of “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” Taylor Nation posted the pre-orders of the CDs ranging in different colors, from Sunrise Boulevard to Aquamarine.
There’s also been buzz on social media about the upcoming Taylor Swift movie that will be hitting theaters Oct. 13,2023. The goal of the film was to relive the tour, and for those who couldn’t go to the tour, to experience their favorite singer live. Swift’s marketing team is encouraging viewers to dress as if they were going to the concert in person, and take up the traditions of the Eras Tour: colorful outfits, trading friendship bracelets, dancing and singing, and wearing any Swiftie memorabilia fans have. The concert runs for more than three hours, but Swift’s publicist, Tree Paine, confirmed to Billboard that the film has a running time of two hours and 45 minutes. It’s unknown what parts of the show her team may have cut to get the movie down to a shorter length. According to Billboard, AMC theaters broke its single-day advance ticket sale records shortly after tickets went on sale. Raking in $26 million in just 24 hours, they beat the record previously held by the 2021 film “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” which earned $16.9 million. The studio said “Swift’s concert film surpassed this record in the first three hours tickets were on sale.”
What’s next for Taylor? Only time will tell. Fans suspect that after she releases “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” she’ll go on to re-release “Reputation (Taylor’s Version)” — an album fans have been waiting for. Taylor has managed to create a tour that has reached fans from all over the world, and pulled people together as a community to hear her sing. It’s quite clear that she is a joy to those far and wide, whether you’re watching her in cameos on TV, or listening to “Red” on repeat in your room. Either way, Swift has earned her title of Miss Americana. Could this be the end of an era?
