There comes a point in everyone’s life when they realize that the world has moved on, and elements of it don’t necessarily belong to you anymore. In cinema, for our parents, it was probably the late 1970s.
Bleak and gritty movies, where everything was serious and even a monster romp based on an airport potboiler like Jaws was something truly special featuring serious men doing serious things, started to cede ground to hopeful and fantastical fare like Superman: The Movie or Star Wars. Cinema began to pass from our parents to us.
Maybe for some Outpopsters, it began to move away from us in the mid-1990s, when music video directors started to infuse movies with their own brand of lunacy and our mid-budget action staples began to resemble a rap video that had been blended with a perfume advertisement.
For the rest of us, it appears the time is now. Cinema no longer belongs to us. It is now being made for other people. A key piece of evidence to support this theory is Taylor Swift’s upcoming The Eras Tour concert movie and the fact it keeps breaking records even before it opens in theaters.
One week ahead of its release, official distributor AMC Theatres says the film’s advance ticket sales have reportedly already surpassed $100 million worldwide. It is now booked into 8,500 cinemas across 100 countries when it opens next Friday. Premium large-screen formats like IMAX and Dolby Cinema are selling out, and across Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays this will have at least four show times a day.
Early estimates show Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour on track to break $100 million domestically alone in its opening weekend. It set a single-day ticket sales record for AMC Theatres with $26 million in North America on the day tickets launched, easily beating the $16.9 million of Spider-Man: No Way Home. This comes alongside the announcement of a Beyonce concert and tour movie.
This is it Outposters. This is the passing of cinema. Away from us, and on to whoever the hell these people are.
Now leave me alone with my Blu-Ray collection and some booze.
