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Perennial showgirl Taylor Swift is bringing the box office to life during the first weekend of October. Almost exactly two years after her 2023 documentary The Eras Tour became the highest-grossing concert film of all time, the global pop superstar has returned to theaters with a behind-the-scenes extravaganza celebrating the release of her twelfth studio album, The Life of a Showgirl.
Per Deadline, as of Saturday morning, Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl is projected to earn $30 to $32 million at the domestic box office by the end of Sunday. This will be the release’s only weekend in theaters, but it has shot straight to No. 1.
Swift is dominating by a wide margin, as last weekend’s No. 1 title, the Leonardo DiCaprio action thriller One Battle After Another, is falling to No. 2 with a projected $12 million 3-day haul. However, this has not prevented the Paul Thomas Anderson movie from becoming the highest-grossing movie ever for the Phantom Thread and Boogie Nights director.
One Battle After Another is set to hit $100 million worldwide by the end of the weekend, which will far surpass Anderson’s previous highest-grossing outing, which was 2007’s There Will Be Blood ($77.2 million worldwide).
Meanwhile, Taylor Swift’s new release competitor, The Smashing Machine, is floundering. The Mark Kerr biopic, which was directed by Benny Safdie and stars Dwayne Johnson, is only projected to debut with a 3-day total of $6.2 million.
This will mark the lowest wide release debut ever for a film with Dwayne Johnson in the lead role, sinking beneath his previous record-holder, which was 2010’s Faster ($8.5 million). Johnson hasn’t had a movie debut below $20 million since 2017, when Baywatch (which co-starred Zac Efron) opened with $18.5 million.
More to come…