Taylor Swift Box Office: ‘Eras Tour’ Heads for Bejeweled $40M-Plus Friday, $110M-Plus Weekend

Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour may have started off its box office run with a muted $2.8 million in grosses from surprise Thursday evening shows, but is quickly turning into a female-fueled cinematic sensation that will smash records for a concert film.

Early returns show the film earning anywhere from $40 million to $48 million on Friday in North America, and likely $110 million or more for the weekend (one studio has the weekend pegged at $107 million, and another at $113 million, according to sources). Just how high Eras Tour will fly will become more apparent by Saturday morning.

The $2.8 million were from Thursday shows added in North America at the eleventh hour. While that’s a fine number, it would have been far more under different circumstances. As it stood, there was little time to advertise the early screenings. Also, fans had already bought tickets and couldn’t exchange them for the first showings.

Heading into the weekend, AMC Theatres, which is distributing the movie in its locations and other cinemas, predicted a record-smashing $150 million global opening, including $100 million domestically, based on sky-high demand and numerous sold-out shows. As of late last week, the pic had racked up north of $100 million in presales.

An ebullient Swift announced late Wednesday on social media that fans no longer had to wait until 6 p.m. local time on Oct. 13 to see Eras Tour in the U.S. and Canada.

But by midday Thursday, seat maps at numerous cinemas, including top theaters in New York City and Los Angeles, showed that many of the just-added shows on Thursday night and Friday afternoon were far from full. (Imax and Dolby screenings fared better, but it was hard to find a sold-out screening).

One likely explanation according to box office sources: Swifties intent on being the very first to see Eras Tour had already snapped up Friday night or over-the-weekend tickets.

Normally, they could have asked to switch tickets and gone instead Thursday evening or early Friday afternoon, when shows now start at 2 p.m., but Eras tickets are nonrefundable (a virtually unheard-of practice in the movie business).

Eli Engel of Middletown, Pennsylvania, was pleased to learn of the early screenings since she had not purchased tickets for Friday. “I immediately jumped on it,” she said. “Thursday night? That’s way more my vibe,” she told PennLive. When she and a friend went online and reserved seats, there were no other seats occupied, Engel told PennLive. By the time they got to the theater, there were two other patrons.

Unsurprisingly, Thursday night’s audience was 76 percent females, with 65 percent of ticket buyers between ages 18 and 35, according to the relatively light sample polled by PostTrak’s exit surveys. The film drew stellar scores.

This summer, Barbie scored $22.3 million in Thursday previews, but that film had a normal release. Eras Tour is being programmed more as an event.

Neither Swift’s camp nor AMC have disclosed the reason for the last-minute decision to add early showings.

Oct. 13, 1:15 p.m.: Updated with revised opening estimates.