Taylor Swift gave cinemas a breather, but a constant stream of hits is still needed

If you think about it, 2023 looks to be the year that blonde women rescued the film industry, with Taylor Swift’s concert film, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour”, which gave a shot of adrenaline to the spring, after “Barbie” have helped offset several high-profile failures over the summer.

While movie theater owners have every right to be thrilled to see people filling their seats (or even dancing in front of them, according to the “Ages” label ), the highs associated with these highlights are not enough to replace what they really need — namely, a steady stream of successes.

So while this spring’s harvest is certainly welcome, as is so often the case, a Swift solution is unlikely to be long-lasting.

Advance sales of “The Eras Tour” left little doubt that the event would be a great success, with only the precise numbers left in doubt.

Grossing around US$96 million (around R$486 million in direct conversion) in domestic release, according to estimates from the AMC cinema chain, its first three days in theaters broke the overall record of any concert film.

Among other things, such as reported Deadlinethanks to “The Eras Tour,” the aggregate weekend count for theaters in North America reached its highest level since early August, when “Barbie” was still rocking, with an assist from “Oppenheimer.”

The film grossed more than US$30 million (about R$152 million) in other parts of the world, with US$13 million (R$66 million) reaching Imax screens — the kind of numbers, its CEO said in a statement, “normally reserved for Hollywood blockbusters.”

Swift’s invasion and the upcoming version of Beyoncé’s “Renaissance Tour” are a way for theaters to take matters into their own hands, at a time when studios have had difficulty — even with major franchises — offering attractions that overcome the winds. contradictions associated with streaming and the pandemic.

These titles, however, convey the feeling of a sugar rush, with short-lived benefits that do not solve the underlying problem or general malaise plaguing the film industry.

In that sense, the next blonde heroine who flies to the rescue may be more important: Brie Larson, aka Captain Marvel, whose sequel “ To the Marvels” hits theaters on November 10th.

After Disney’s recent stumbles at the box office — with unsatisfactory returns for “Indiana Jones and The Relic of Destiny” It is “Haunted Mansion” — seeing a big-budget Marvel movie liven up spring would be a welcome return to better days.

However, even Marvel does not offer certainties of success, since “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” got his next phase of films off to a mediocre start at best, before the third “Guardians of the Galaxy” pave the way for a global box office of 845 million dollars (4.279 billion reais), becoming one of the bright spots in an otherwise uneven year.

As if the climate for film wasn’t uncertain enough, the studios did themselves no favors by allowing the screenwriters’ and actors’ guild strikes (the first resolvedthe last ones still in progress) dragged on for so long, forcing release schedules to be reconciled in order to avoid deserts in movie theaters next fall.

The studios will eventually recover, but if we’ve seen anything over the past three years, any development that even temporarily dampens the desire and desire to go to the movies offers no guarantee of recovering those losses with so much streaming content spread among consumers .

Such as “Barbie”, “The Eras Tour” already seems to have stirred some giddiness in distribution circles, providing evidence, as television networks like to say when they get a big audience, that “the pipes are still working” in terms of the ability to deliver mass viewing experiences.

Still, there aren’t many artists with the kind of following that Swift and Beyoncé command. That alone is no reason to throw cold water on the celebration, just a reminder that, with a challenge of this magnitude, Hollywood can’t just walk away from it.