Box Office: Taylor Swift’s ‘Eras Tour’ Is No.1 With $31M, ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Rides to $23M

Swift's concert pic had no trouble dancing past Martin Scorsese's new Western adult drama starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone and Robert De Niro.
Taylor Swift and AMC Theatres’ Eras Tour stayed dancing atop the domestic box office in its second weekend with an estimated $31 million for a domestic total of $129.8 million, while Martin Scorsese‘s Western adult drama Killers of the Flower Moon rode to a respectable $23 million in its big screen debut.

The superstar’s movie continues to break records, including becoming the first concert film in history to cross the $100 million mark domestically, not adjusted for inflation. It is also the first independently released film in a decade to make that much in only two weekends, according to AMC. Taylor Swift: Eras Tour tumbled 67 percent, which is a relatively good hold for the genre. The $15 million pic was self-financed by Swift.
Flower Moon — starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone and Robert De Niro — was never expected to sing more loudly than Eras Tour considering it is an adult drama, among other challenges. Yet it delivered the third-best nationwide opening of Scorsese’s career behind 2010’s Shutter Island ($41 million) and 2006’s The Departed ($26.9 million), not adjusted for inflation. It also ties with The Departed and Goodfellas in receiving the best CinemaScores of his career, an A-.

But the pressure is on, considering Scorsese’s Western true-crime drama cost Apple’s film studio around $200 million to make (at the same time, the usual box office metrics don’t apply to the tech giant). Apple Original Films is counting on Flower Moon to enjoy a long and steady run in theaters as Oscar season unfolds, pointing to strong reviews and audience exit polls. The tech giant picked up the project when Paramount, Scorsese’s go-studio, passed. Later, Paramount signed on to distribute the movie with Apple handling all marketing and publicity.

A major challenge for the film is Flower Moon‘s hefty running time of three hours and 26 minutes (Eras Tour isn’t short either, running two hours and 48 minutes).

Adult dramas became an endangered species during the pandemic and have yet to be taken off the list (Christopher Nolan and Universal’s Oppenheimer being a major exception). Flower Moon indeed skewed older: 56 percent of ticket buyers were over 30, including at least 35 percent 45 and older. This latter demo is notorious for not rushing out on opening weekend. In regards to gender breakdown, the movie skewed notably male (62 percent).
Another challenge: DiCaprio — one of the world’s biggest movie stars — and the rest of the cast haven’t been able to do any publicity since the SAG-AFTRA strike commenced July 14. Apple was able to bank some interviews previous to the strike and generated headlines around the world when it took Killers of the Flower Moon to the Cannes Film Festival in late May but didn’t reap the benefits of a final publicity blitz by the actors. (Scorsese, who has a strong fan base, instead did the heavy lifting solo.)

Overseas, Flower Moon debuted to a somewhat muted $21 million from 63 markets for a global bow of $44 million. Westerns can be a tough sell overseas and not having DiCaprio available to do publicity no doubt hurt. It fared best in Europe, where it placed No. 1 in several markets, including France ($2.6 million) and Germany ($1.3 million).#taylorswift