Christopher Nolan say Taylor Swift has showed how ‘incredibly valuable’ cinemas are

Taylor Swift has earned the praise of legendary Hollywood director Christopher Nolan for proving the “value” of cinemas with her Eras tour film.

Last Friday (13 October), the big-screen adaptation of Swift’s career-spanning live show hit 8,500 cinemas in 100 countries in the US and around the world.

The Eras Tour quickly became the highest-grossing concert film in history, and now the director behind another of the year’s biggest releases, Oppenheimer, has heaped praise on Swift for her impact on the global box office.

Speaking at a City University New York event ahead of the film’s release, Nolan commended Swift for side-stepping streaming services and studios and releasing the film directly with AMC Cinemas. Her last concert documentary film, 2020’s Miss Americana, was released on Netflix.

“Taylor Swift is about to show the studios, because her concert film is not being distributed by the studios, it’s being distributed by a theatre owner, AMC, and it’s going to make an enormous amount of money,” Nolan said (via Variety).

“And this is the thing. [Theatrical exhibition is] a format and a way of seeing things and sharing stories, or sharing experiences, that’s incredibly valuable. And if [the studios] don’t want it, somebody else will. So that’s just the truth of it.”

The Eras Tour film earned over $100m (£82m) in advance ticket sales alone. Its opening took $123.5m (£101m) globally, making it the second highest-grossing October opening for a film ever.

As well as getting people back into the cinemas – a feat achieved earlier this summer following the release of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie – Swift’s film has also reignited debate about cinema etiquette.

Clips on TikTok showed screenings “turning into a full-blown Taylor Swift concert”, with fans standing on seats, singing along and filming the screen during the movie.

But while many fans said that they had loved “yelling the lyrics and dancing along” with their fellow Swifties, others were less impressed.

“I think it’s great they’re having fun but doing this at the cinema is so weird because there’s other people watching other movies and probably couldn’t even enjoy their own movie because of the screaming,” one fan wrote.

Another echoed: “There’s having fun and there’s acting like any rules of society don’t exist because you bought a £20 cinema ticket. They should be respectful towards others and their experience.”

Swift’s Eras tour live show recently wrapped its first leg of US dates. It will continue across the globe in November and into 2024, before arriving in the UK in June and August.

Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour is in cinemas now.