While AMC Theatres and Variance’s Taylor Swift: The Official Release of a Showgirl was indeed front-loaded, declining 36% on Saturday with $10M from its pure Friday gross of $15.8M, the 14x Grammy winner is seeing a standalone gross and opening weekend for her cinematic experience of $33M.

There have been other album launches teed up with movies to prop them, ala Imax’s 2021 Covid release of Halsey’s If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power ($135K opening), but none like Swift’s. Can you think of another music-film or theatrical release that compares to this box office threshold, especially as an 11th hour stunt? It’s a feat to make any motion picture studio envious. Not even Disney in all its brand wattage has ever attempted to do a theatrical release on a big IP like this, with only two weeks of thrifty promotion. Even The Weeknd in all of his platinum success, and with the help of Jenna Ortega couldn’t pull off what Swift did here in her opening; his Hurry Up Tomorrow, a component to his latest album and tour, not even seeing a tomorrow with an opening of $3.3M and a final domestic of $5.2M.

When it came to playability of Showgirl, which we told you was mostly in the East, Midwest and South, similar to Eras Tour, most consumers flocked to AMC to see the movie. Since AMC drove the news on the movie, that’s where moviegoers thought they could see it. The movie’s top 50 theaters this weekend, led by AMC’s Dine-In Disney Springs in Florida with just over $95K, were largely AMC’s. The only non-AMC circuits ranking in the top 50 were the Landmark Kanata in Ottawa, Canada (No. 6), Landmark Whitby in Toronto (No. 14), Cineplex Scotiabank in Vancouver (No. 18), Cineplex Park Royal in Vancouver (No. 24), Cineplex Yonge Dundas in Toronto (No. 46) and the Regal Winter Park Village in Orlando-Dayton (No. 47).

Again, when it came to the marketing campaign there weren’t any trailers or in-theater posters. Just billboards, websites, emails, and the Swift social media machine of a half billion-plus. This is a box office case study for the textbooks, and one which I could see rival studios attempting to emulate.

Meanwhile, smelling salts haven’t been able to get A24’s release of Dwayne Johnson’s The Smashing Machine off the mat, the movie coming in at $6M, the lowest ever for the WWE-turned-blockbuster star. No one was expecting a San Andreas opening here. This was clearly a dramatic, out-of-the-box play for The Rock, but, man, this started at tracking at $20M and plummeted to where it is. Yes, Taylor, you’re partly to blame, but not entirely. She stole Rock’s premium large format screens, particularly the Dolby’s. But the cut runs deeper on this biopic on UFC champ Mark Kerr.

There is blood in Paul Thomas Anderson’s $130M-$140M production of One Battle After Another which is clearing $100.7M global with an offshore cume of $58.9M and a domestic hold of $11.1M (-49%) for a running total of $42.8M. As we told you previously, the movie stands to make more worldwide than DiCaprio’s previous Killers of the Flower Moon ($158.7M), which dropped -60% in its second stateside weekend making $9.3M. While Battle is still powered by the coasts, the premium, VistaVision and 70MM theaters (of which there were Imax this weekend at $1.1M for a $7.4M running cume in the format) are the pic’s ammunition. One Batter After Another, despite ceding Imax to Disney’s Tron Ares next weekend, will continue to hold VistaVision, 70MM and some PLFs in its third go-round. The anticipation is for the movie to pop back into Imax again and again as it heads deeper into awards season.

Sunday AM figures:

Other

Bone Lake (BST) 1,059 theaters, Fri $468K Sat $212K Sun $148K 3-day $828K, Wk 1

Anemone (Foc) 865 theaters, Fri $310K, Sat $220K Sun $170K 3-day $700K, PTA $809 (eek), Wk 1

via Deadline