Even though her filmography is littered with failures like the critically-trashed Valentine’s Day, cinematic nothingburger The Giver, and a pair of the modern era’s biggest bombs in Cats and Amsterdam, nobody seems willing to even contemplate the idea of taking on Taylor Swift‘s concert movie at the box office.
To be fair, it’s easy to see why when the most generous of early projections have The Eras Tour heading for at least $70 million through its first three days in theater, although it isn’t outside the realms of possibility to expect the real numbers to be twice as high.
Blumhouse’s legacy sequel The Exorcist: Believer was first to blink almost as soon as the release date for Swifties everywhere to mark in the calendar was revealed, before Meg Ryan’s hotly-anticipated return to the world of rom-coms in What Happens Next followed suit, with Hilary Swank drama Ordinary Angels being pulled from the calendar entirely.
As if that wasn’t enough, Sony has altered its plans for the rollout of Dumb Money, which was initially scheduled to go wide on Oct. 6. Instead, the studio has moved the expansion a week early, presumably because it would end up being utterly decimated in the face of The Eras Tour just seven days later.
Meanwhile, comedy The Persian Version was intended to arrive on Oct. 13, but has now been pushed by a week as a result of screen availability offset by The Eras Tour. That leaves supernatural horror Dear David as the only soul brave enough to take on Taylor Swift head-to-head, which is ironic considering it looks like one of the worst movies to arrive so far this year, so delaying it more than likely wouldn’t mean a damn thing in the short or long term seeing as it’s almost definitely going to flop.
