With Taylor Swift, ‘Barbie,’ and Beyonce, Movie Theaters Tell Female Audiences: You Belong With Me

When Taylor Swift and Beyonce appeared sharing a tub of popcorn at an AMC theater in Los Angeles Wednesday night for the premiere of Swift’s concert movie, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, the moment was an Avengers-like teaming of pop culture superheroines. In the midst of the long-running industry strike that has driven studios to delay some of their 2023 releases, the two pop stars have flown in to boost the box office. The Eras Tour is now in theaters, and Beyonce’s concert movie, Renaissance, A Film By Beyonce, will open Dec. 1. 

The majority of the moviegoers the singers are expected to lure to theaters will be women and girls, building upon an audience that has already helped drive the biggest film of the year, Barbie. PostTrak combined exit polling data from the Thursday night screenings of Swift’s film, which is expected to earn more than $150 million globally this weekend, reveal an audience that is so far 76 percent female, according to a source with access to the surveys. While Warner Bros.’ Barbie, which has earned $1.43 billion worldwide, eventually drew plenty of men and boys to the theater, that film saw 69 percent of its opening weekend box office in July coming from female ticket buyers.

“I find it interesting and exciting that the two biggest theatrical events of the year were made by and primarily for women,” says David Herrin, founder of movie tracking firm The Quorum. “Is this a kind of reckoning for 15 years of superhero movies made for men? Maybe.”

Prior to Barbie, the theatrical business’s post-pandemic recovery was largely being anchored by men ages 18 to 35, who were turning out for comic book movies and action films. And most of the films that Hollywood has given the event treatment to since Covid, from Paramount’s Top Gun: Maverick to Disney’s Avatar: The Way of the Water to Universal’s Oppenheimer, have skewed male.

But films that have managed to engage passionate female fan bases pay off, often in spite of industry expectations for them, says Hunger Games and Crazy Rich Asians producer Nina Jacobson, whose new movie Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songs and Snakes, a prequel to the nearly $3 billion grossing dystopian film series that debuted in 2012, is due in theaters from Lionsgate Nov. 17.

“People always act surprised when something that begins as female driven performs,” Jacobson says. “Part of it is, because we’re an industry that draws on comps to predict performance, we’re always looking backwards, not forwards. For a lot of these movies, there are no comps.”

Swift is certainly in a category of her own. AMC, the theater chain releasing her concert film, is largely relying on the singer’s 523 million social media followers and the awareness of the tour itself to spread the word. According to a Morning Consult poll conducted in March, only 1 in 4 people who identified as avid Swift fans were able to get tickets to the Eras Tour, which suggests plenty of Swifties will want in on the movie version, which costs $19.89 for adults and $13.13 for kids. “There will definitely be pent up demand to see her in any capacity,” says Morning Consult brand analyst Ellyn Briggs. “Seeing the movie will be more accessible logistically and financially.”

It’s also likely there will be repeat viewers, and group moviegoing, both particular characteristics of young female audiences. “Both the Barbie movie and the Eras Tour had event-ism attached to them,” Briggs says. “It wasn’t just a one evening event. It was, let’s plan cute outfits, make friendship bracelets, go together.”

In addition to the Hunger Games prequel, there will also be a female-driven comic book movie in theaters next month, The Marvels, directed by Nia DaCosta and featuring three female leads (Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris and Iman Vellani). Some upcoming movies with female fan bases are looking to draft off of Swift’s audience— Paramount recently moved its Mean Girl musical from a streaming only release to a theatrical one, and they’ve placed trailer for the film, which is due in January, in front of Swift’s movie. 

“It’s great to have something that feels like a giant cultural communal event a month before your movie opens,” Jacobson says. “Having a big theatrical magnet is good for everybody.”

Studios have had some other theatrical hits with female audiences in the post-pandemic era. This summer Disney’s live-action reimagining The Little Mermaid earned nearly $300 million domestically, while Paramount’s 2022 sleeper The Lost City, the Sandra Bullock-Channing Tatum rom-com, grossed more than $190 million worldwide.

Part of what makes these female-driven theatrical events noteworthy is that they are a reversal of a decade-long trend where romantic comedies and young adult films, the genres that have traditionally attracted younger female moviegoers, migrated to streaming. Early standouts like Kissing Booth and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before became hits for Netflix and were singled out during quarterly earnings reports, and recent entry Love at First Sight has been in the streamer’s self-reported Top Ten.

If there has been an uptick in studios seeking scripts for theatrical films geared toward young women, that has yet to show up on the development side, however. “I wish that was the response,” says a literary rep when asked if there are more open assignments for projects dedicated to the young female demo now that writers are back to work. 

—Mia Galuppo contributed reporting.