This weekend at the box office is a showdown of two pop culture titans: Martin Scorsese and Taylor Swift.
The “Mean Streets” director and “Mean” singer each have a movie facing off this weekend, “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour.” Scorsese’s latest movie has so far made $2.6 million in Thursday previews at the box office. “Eras Tour” made $5.9 million on Thursday, Oct. 19.
Sadly for Scorsese, “Killers of the Flower Moon” will be no match for Swift’s concert movie, which is entering its second weekend. “Flower Moon,” the week’s only new release, is targeting between $20 million and $30 million this weekend, while “Eras Tour” looks to top the charts again with $30 million to $40 million in its second week. There’s a chance, however, that Taylor Swift’s movie falls steeper than expected in its sophomore weekend with around $25 million, setting up a slim chance for a “Flower Moon” No. 1 spot.
Scorsese’s 26th directed feature stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons and more in an R-rated, historical epic that runs for nearly three and a half hours. (“Eras Tour” isn’t much shorter, clocking in at almost three hours of Swift songs). The movie, based on author David Grann’s acclaimed novel, follows a string of murders against the Osage nation in the early 1920s and marks Scorsese’s first theatrical film since 2016’s “Silence.” That film made $7.1 million domestically and $23 million globally on a $50 million budget.
With its $200 million price tag, “Flower Moon” has a more complicated path to profitability. Paramount is distributing the film, but Apple backed it and will put it on Apple TV+ at a later date. For an adult-skewing, three-hour drama, an opening in the mid $20 million range could still be successful when the genre has been mostly unable to connect at the box office outside of this year’s “Oppenheimer.”