Christopher Nolan is a lover of cinema, and his watchlist includes some surprising films. Films like Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour. Sometimes, it isn’t necessarily about the content of the film itself, but the importance of keeping audiences going to theaters. While Swift fans are treating theaters like concert venues and singing out loud in a way that is disruptive, they’re also putting money back into the theatrical industry. It’s especially important since movie theaters have struggled in a post-COVID society.
At a talk at The Graduate Center at CUNY titled “Oppenheimer from Biography to Blockbuster,” director and writer Christopher Nolan and producer Emma Thomas spoke with Kai Bird, who wrote the 2005 biography American Prometheus, the book that Oppenheimer is based on. One of the topics they discussed was the importance of seeing movies together as a collective body. While Oppenheimer has been one of Nolan’s most successful films, Nolan and Thomas reflected on films not receiving theatrical releases and instead going straight to streaming. This led to Nolan saying that Taylor Swift is changing the game by releasing The Eras Tour directly with AMC.
“Taylor Swift is about to show the studios, because her concert film is not being distributed by the studios, and it’s going to make an enormous amount of money,” Nolan said. “And this is the thing, this is a format, this is a way of seeing things and sharing stories, or sharing experiences that’s incredibly valuable. And if they don’t want it, somebody else will. So that’s just the truth of it.” It does highlight his upset over how the release of Tenet was handled, as well as his ongoing fight to allow movies a theatrical release.
I would love to see Nolan at a Swift concert, give him a bracelet
Now, the comment is more about how Swift’s film (and other movies) will make money with or without studio distribution. But that doesn’t mean my mind didn’t instantly hope that Nolan went to the Eras tour himself and got a bracelet with his kids. Because his films are often serious and cerebral, fans don’t think that Nolan is knowledgeable about pop culture. At least when it comes to movies like Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour.
He’s not wrong. This move by Swift will change the way that movies are released. Creatives are going to see that they don’t need the studios, and the studios are going to have to come to the realization that the power they keep trying to flex isn’t really theirs to begin with. Someone like Taylor Swift can release her film with AMC directly and it can make a lot of money because that’s what her fans will pay to go and see. Creatives like Nolan are taking note of that. Because look, if Christopher Nolan did the same thing, we’d all be following what the Swifties are doing. Just look at what happened with Oppenheimer‘s run in IMAX 70mm.
(featured image: Dominik Bindl/Getty Images)
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