Taylor Swift pulverized the Rock at the weekend box office.
“The Official Release Party of a Showgirl,” essentially an 89-minute commercial for Ms. Swift’s latest album, sold an estimated $33 million in tickets at cinemas in the United States and Canada from Friday through Sunday, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. Less a movie than a collection of bonus features on a DVD, “The Official Release Party” played in 3,702 theaters and was easily No. 1.
The audience for the not-quite-a-movie was roughly 88 percent female and 70 percent white, according to PostTrak, a film industry research service. Critics did not review “The Official Release Party,” but Ms. Swift’s fans loved what they saw. They gave it an A+ grade in CinemaScore exit polls. (Ms. Swift did not disclose how much she spent to make “The Official Release Party,” which collected an additional $13 million overseas.)
Ms. Swift’s return to theaters — her concert documentary “The Eras Tour” was a top ticket seller in 2023 — siphoned attention away from Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” (Warner Bros.), which fell to second place in its second weekend, collecting an estimated $11.1 million, for a new domestic total of $42.8 million.
“The Smashing Machine,” an A24 sports drama starring Dwayne Johnson, the former professional wrestler who is known to fans as the Rock, came in a weak third. The film collected about $6 million in wide release and cost $40 million to make, not including marketing.
A24 had been promoting “The Smashing Machine” for months, in part by aggressively positioning Mr. Johnson as a possible Oscar nominee. Reviews have been warm. Ticket buyers gave the film a B-minus grade in CinemaScore exit polls.
A24 said in a statement on Sunday that the film, co-starring Emily Blunt and directed by Benny Safdie, “stands as a creative achievement that will resonate far beyond opening weekend.”
Ms. Swift’s cinematic stunt — she said “The Official Release Party” would only play for one weekend — was a surprise win for theater owners, many of whom are still trying to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. Multiplexes in the United States and Canada had their worst summer since 1981, after adjusting for inflation and excluding the pandemic years, when many theaters were closed for long periods.
But Ms. Swift’s movie was less enthusiastically received in Hollywood. Some studio executives were annoyed that she dropped “The Official Release Party” on the theatrical release schedule with only two weeks notice. She also managed to fill a lot of seats with almost no marketing, relying nearly entirely on her own social media feeds and coverage by the news media. Studios spend tens of millions of dollars on promotional campaigns for wide-release movies.
Brooks Barnes covers all things Hollywood. He joined The Times in 2007 and previously worked at The Wall Street Journal.
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