Taylor Swift dominated the box office over the weekend with her special Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl movie event, topping the U.S. chart with an estimated domestic haul of $33 million, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
How big a weekend did Swift have? Her three-day-only event for the 89-minute movie that is essentially an extended trailer for her new The Life of a Showgirl LP easily soared well above the box office of two major Hollywood stars appearing in films with Oscar buzz. In total, adding in overseas ticket sales of $13 million, the Showgirl run earned a total of $46 million over the weekend while playing on more than 3,700 screens.
The movie that opened on screens on Friday to coincide with the the singer’s release of her 12th studio album is a mash-up of music videos — including the Swift-directed one for the single “The Fate of Ophelia” — behind-the-scenes footage, lyric videos and personal reflections from Swift on the creative process behind the music.
While Swift soared, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s MMA drama, The Smashing Machine, tanked, bringing in just $6 million from more than 3,300 theaters, making for the worst wide opening of the wrestler-turned-actor’s career in a dramatic role that was being touted as possible Oscar bait. And, according to THR, Johnson can hardly blame Swifties for his passion project film’s poor open, as nearly 90% of Showgirl ticket buyers were female while the Smashing Machine audience tilted heavily male at 70%-plus.
In addition to smashing the Machine, Swift also easily soared over Paul Thomas Anderson’s acclaimed One Battle After Another, the Leonardo DiCaprio-starring drama that fell to second place in week two. Receipts were down 49% from week one to $11.1 million in North America, for a 10-day domestic total of $42.8 million, with a total of $101.7 million globally to date.
The Showgirls movie — announced just two weeks before opening with little promotion — follows on the heels of Swift’s last big screen triumph, the 2023 Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour concert film, which opened to a record $93.2 million domestically as it swiftly climbed to become the top-grossing concert film of all time with $261.6 million in global ticket sales.