Along with dominating the streaming music platforms with the release of her new album, Taylor Swift also dominated the weekend box office with The Official Release Party of a Showgirl.
Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl was a collection of music videos, behind-the-scenes footage, and visualizers that allowed fans to see and hear the new songs on the big screen. Despite the short notice for the theatrical release, it made $34 million in over 3,700 theaters and easily topped the box office charts. It couldn’t reach the heights of Taylor’s last theatrical release, the concert film for The Eras Tour, which opened to $93.2 million in October 2023. The Eras Tour film had a significantly longer lead-in than the Showgirl release party, but was only available in a few hundred more theaters. The Showgirl release party was also a limited event, available only in theaters from October 3rd to 5th. Worldwide, the Showgirl release party has made $47 million. As you might expect, the film received an A+ CinemaScore from audiences, who were likely the most hardcore Swifties.
One Battle After Another dropped to second place with $11 million. That’s a 50% drop from last weekend’s #1 debut. The movie has $42.6 million domestically and $101.5 million worldwide.
The Smashing Machine sputtered into theaters in third place with $6 million. Expectations were much higher, based on the star power of Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, as well as the hype surrounding Johnson’s transformative performance. For A24, the opening is between Midsommar and Death of a Unicorn and up from their last sports biopic, The Iron Claw, which opened to $4.9 million. The movie received a B- CinemaScore, which doesn’t bode well for word of mouth heading into its second weekend. This soft opening could also affect The Rock’s potential chances at getting nominated for an Oscar, which seemed like one of the main goals of the film.
Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie and The Conjuring: Last Rites rounded out the top 5. Gabby’s Dollhouse experienced a fairly steep 61% drop for a family film, earning $32.7 million worldwide.
Further down the list, Avatar: The Way of Water returned to theaters to start building hype for Fire and Ash and made another $3.2 million. It now has $687.6 million in domestic and $2.3 billion in worldwide total grosses. Good Boy debuted in ninth place with $2.3 million. That’s the second-best opening ever for a Shudder/IFC movie, behind Clown in a Cornfield, which opened to $3.6 million earlier this year.
The best per-theater average went to Orwell: 2+2 = 5, which made $25,887 in one theater.
