Taylor Swift‘s concert film The Eras Tour has officially become the highest grossing concert movie of all time.
As of yesterday (January 7), the film overtook Michael Jackson‘s This Is It with an overall global taking of $261.6million (£206m), as reported by Variety.
After its release in October, the film scored the biggest opening weekend for a concert film in history, while the tour itself was the first ever to gross $1billion.
The film documents the six performances completed by Swift at Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium earlier this year. The shows encompassed a career-spanning setlist that lifted songs from all ten of her albums from ‘Fearless’ to ‘Midnights’.
“The Eras Tour is a concert movie in the true sense,” NME wrote in a four-star review. “In the space of one seamless performance, Swift is at turns a playfully eccentric artist, a country star and a genuine pop icon.”
Elsewhere, the death of a fan at a Taylor Swift show in Brazil in November was caused by heat exhaustion, a forensics report has concluded.
Ana Clara Benevides, aged 23, had fainted during the show on November 17, which took place in 38-degree heat. She died hours later at a local hospital after suffering a cardiac arrest.
Following news of her death, Swift took to social media to say that she was left “devastated” by the announcement, and later cancelled the following show in the city due to the extreme temperatures. It had been widely reported that fans hadn’t been allowed to bring water into the Nilton Santos Stadium.
December also saw the main plaintiff in the lawsuit against Live Nation over the messy ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s ‘Eras’ tour drop the suit.
Back in December 2022, more than a dozen fans from 13 states submitted a lawsuit at Los Angeles County District Court, which alleged that Ticketmaster violated the California Cartwright Act and the California Unfair Competition Law during its “verified fan” pre-sale.
Michelle Sterioff – a Swift fan – filed her case in December 2022, weeks after the botched Eras rollout. At the time, her lawyers blasted Live Nation as a “monopoly” that had “knowingly misled millions of fans.”
Per Billboard, Sterioff has agreed to drop her case against the concert giant, months after both sides agreed to put the case on hold, with a court filing from August saying the two sides had “agreed to continue their ongoing settlement discussions through mediation.”