Perennial showgirl Taylor Swift is bringing the box office to life during the first weekend of October. Almost exactly two years after her 2023 documentary The Eras Tour became the highest-grossing concert film of all time, the global pop superstar has returned to theaters with a behind-the-scenes extravaganza celebrating the release of her twelfth studio album, The Life of a Showgirl.

Per ᴅᴇᴀᴅline, as of Saturday morning, Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl is projected to earn $30 to $32 million at the domestic box office by the end of Sunday. This will be the release’s only weekend in theaters, but it has sH๏τ straight to No. 1.

Swift is dominating by a wide margin, as last weekend’s No. 1 тιтle, the Leonardo DiCaprio action thriller One Battle After Another, is falling to No. 2 with a projected $12 million 3-day haul. However, this has not prevented the Paul Thomas Anderson movie from becoming the highest-grossing movie ever for the Phantom Thread and Boogie Nights director.

One Battle After Another is set to hit $100 million worldwide by the end of the weekend, which will far surpᴀss Anderson’s previous highest-grossing outing, which was 2007’s There Will Be Blood ($77.2 million worldwide).

In fact, that total will comprise nearly one-quarter of the box office that has been earned by all of the extant Paul Thomas Anderson movies put together. Once One Battle After Another hits $100 million, the director’s collected filmography (which also includes Magnolia, Licorice Pizza, Inherent Vice, and The Master) will hit a cumulative $417.7 million.

Meanwhile, Taylor Swift’s new release compeтιтor, The Smashing Machine, is floundering. The Mark Kerr biopic, which was directed by Benny Safdie and stars Dwayne Johnson, is only projected to debut with a 3-day total of $6.2 million.

This will mark the lowest wide release debut ever for a film with Dwayne Johnson in the lead role, sinking beneath his previous record-holder, which was 2010’s Faster ($8.5 million). Johnson hasn’t had a movie debut below $20 million since 2017, when Baywatch (which co-starred Zac Efron) opened with $18.5 million.

While he is one of the biggest movie stars in the world, Dwayne Johnson movies have had an inconsistent theatrical track record in the 2020s. Moana 2 was a billion-dollar hit, but Red One failed to connect with audiences during its theatrical run.

Additionally, Jungle Cruise and Black Adam struggled to overcome their huge budgets, both of which were reportedly around $200 million or more.

While all three of those 2020s movies have had second lives on VOD and streaming, it is possible that Johnson’s name in and of itself is not providing as much of a draw as other stars like Taylor Swift, and that he needs to work with stronger IPs like Moana and Jumanji in order to get viewers into theaters for the time being.

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