Not much was going on entertainment-wise this past weekend. We’re most definitely not in summer any more–heck, it freaking RAINED in SoCal Friday morning and we’re actually needing long sleeves for our morning constitutionals. But we also had no new series, linear or streaming, of consequence that launched aside from the lukewarm start to the second half-century of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. Sports? Hockey’s new season starts tomorrow night, NBA pre-season is still VERY early and please, don’t get me started on New York pro football or, for that matter, the Yankees.
And as for the theatres, we’re still too far out from the holidays–and that includes Halloween–for anything other than esoteric and nichy fare. With one very glaring exception, one that we literally didn’t even see coming as recently as Labor Day. CNN’s Auzenia Bacon explained:
In an unprecedented win for a theatrical release announced just two weeks ago, the album debut event from American pop superstar Taylor Swift topped the domestic box office with about $33 million domestically.
“Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl,” released in theaters for a three-day run to coincide with Swift’s latest album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” played in more than 3,700 theatres in the United States and Canada and in another 3,588 cinemas internationally. The movie earned an estimated $13 million internationally, according to AMC, bringing its global earnings to $46 million.
Added the A(I)SSOCIATED PRESS’ version:
“For Taylor Swift to harness the power of the movie theater to build her brand, create excitement among her fans, and create a communal experience outside of her touring, outside of her live performances, is really a stroke of genius,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “To be able to add another $33 million to the box office bottom line is much welcomed by theater owners who were looking for content for their big screens.” It comes nearly two years after her “The Eras Tour” concert film opened to $96 million, with Swift extending her streak of box office dominance.
If only our overhyping researcher was paying attention to history and context as that coda to his spiel pointed out, perhaps his choice of language wouldn’t be so flowery. Not only was this opening well below the gold standard that Swift’s previous gift to AMC produced, as THE ENTERTAINMENT STRATEGY GUY dutifully noted in a paywall-less piece he authored when SHOWGIRL’s mini-window was announced, it was practically pedestrian compared to other efforts.
Later that year, Beyoncé’s concert film did a multiple less revenue than Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, only $34 million in the US and $44 million globally. And Beyoncé is arguably the second biggest pop star in America! By the next year, Olivia Rodrigo’s concert film didn’t even chart on Netflix. We haven’t really seen a concert film since then…This was the “Taylor Swift Data Fallacy” at work. We assumed that Taylor Swift represented some new “average” when she was the ceiling for this genre. What matters is why.
So what is this data fallacy specifically?… When the most popular celebrity, creator or piece of IP in one genre or medium switches to a new genre or medium, and then their work succeeds. It represents the ceiling of that transition, while most folks assume it is the average.
The Mysterious ESG then went on to point out a host of examples of other outliers in various corners of media that are similarly outsized. It’s pretty exhaustive and convincing, and frankly it’s way better presented than the typical data dump his for-fee analyses of streaming “ratings” typically is. It’s worth a read, and your eyes probably won’t get blurry from it like mine usually do from his meticulous prose and graphic Ludditeness.
The piece puts into perspective the wishful thinking that AMC’s cockeyed optimist-in-chief expressed in Taiyler S. Mitchell’s recap that dropped on HUFFPOST late last night:
“It was simply a wonderful gift to her passionate and enthusiastic fans, who got to see, on our giant screens, behind-the-scenes footage and insight into ‘The Life of a Showgirl.’ AMC Theatres is so proud to have collaborated with Taylor,” AMC’s CEO Adam Aron said, according to Variety. “What an honor and privilege and joy it has been for us to once again play a role in her incomparable success.”
Enjoy it while you can, AA. Because all you’d have to do is text your competitors to see what kind of reaction might be awaiting you–let alone them–for the balance of this month. Bacon made particular note of that reality check:
A24’s “The Smashing Machine” debuted this weekend and finished third with a lackluster $6 million, short of estimates that it could earn around $10 million. Shawn Robbins, director of analytics at Fandango and founder and owner of Box Office Theory, noted that the mixed-martial arts drama fell below expectations despite the star power of Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt. “There will be a lot of finger-pointing as to whether or not it was because Taylor (Swift) announced her film … (but) there’s not a lot of a crossover audience there,” Robbins said.
In other words, it’s still Tay-Tay’s world, we just live in it.
Which I guess should point out what I apparently overlooked in my shrug-emoji reaction to the quietness of this past weekend. I still haven’t downloaded LIFE OF A SHOWGIRL. Seems like there’s still a pretty wide window of down time to savor it.
Until next time…