As hungry consumers rushed from their homes to take in live performances from stars like Beyoncé in the post-quarantine years, a simple but crucial question came to light: How can we keep experiencing concerts, but in a way that minimizes the number of people we need to smell while doing it?
The answer, it seems, is concert movies — theatergoing experiences that combine the decibel levels of a live music event with the everyman-friendly ticket prices of an Expendables sequel. Thanks to the jaw-dropping presale success of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour movie (helpfully titled Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour), the floodgates have opened. It seems like they’ll let anyone with hundreds of millions of followers and a pile of awards taller than they are have a concert movie these days.
By way of example: Variety reports that former Destiny’s Child member Beyoncé Knowles—who enjoys a fair bit of celebrity—is headed to cinemas as soon as December 1 of this year. Current scuttlebutt indicates that the beloved megastar’s Renaissance World Tour is being developed into a moviegoing experience exclusively for AMC Theaters, and will feature “elements of her top-grossing 2023 live shows, parts of the long-gestating visual album Renaissance and a documentary-style account of making the record and building out the tour.”
Will Beyonce and Taylor Swift upend the studio system?
Concert movies are nothing new, but the fevered interest in them following Swift’s latest project has turned them into a shockingly viable financial opportunity for studios. Variety reports that Beyoncé’s Renaissance film is projected to bring in over half a billion at the box office. With Deadline predicting a roughly $100 million opening weekend for the Eras Tour movie, Hollywood executives are undoubtedly beginning to wonder why they poured all that cash into CGI Spider-Men over the years when they could’ve just pointed their iPhones at a Reel Big Fish house show and let the money make itself.
Concerns have been voiced over the effects that these projects could have on the studio system, circumventing traditional distribution conventions like they do and passing straight from the artist to the theater chains, farm to multimillion-dollar table. Eras and Renaissance are primed to take a substantial cut of the 2023 box office away from already-struggling studios. Could Beyoncé and Swift’s monopoly on the theater seats be what finally topples a hundred years of Hollywood tradition?
Hard to say. Probably not, though. And for what it’s worth, the studios are doing a fine job of shooting themselves in the foot thanks to unsustainable streaming models and cutthroat project cancelations without the help of the star of Austin Powers 3. It’ll be fun to hear “Church Girl” in surround sound, though.