Taylor Swift’s Concert Film Is the Future of Moviegoing, Says Christopher Nolan | Vanity Fair

By Savannah Walsh

As Taylor Swift’s Eras concert film continues to electrify the October box office, filmmakers like Christopher Nolan are praising the pop star’s business acumen—and predicting how the success of her project, distributed outside the studio system, could revolutionize moviegoing.

At a recent event for his film Oppenheimer, Nolan spoke about the possibilities opened up by Swift’s unorthodox release model. “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 theater owner, AMC, and it’s going to make an enormous amount of money,” said the filmmaker, who shifted from his longtime home of Warner Bros. to Universal for his latest film. “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.”

Nolan isn’t the only director who’s taken notice of Swift’s prowess ahead of her feature directorial debut. In an interview with W magazine last year, Guillermo del Toro called Swift “a very accomplished director,” with multiple music videos and All Too Well: The Short Film under her belt. “She’s incredibly articulate and deep about what she’s trying to do—and what she will do,” del Toro continued, noting that he had given Swift multiple books, including one he referenced while creating Pan’s Labyrinth. “I have the greatest admiration for her.”

Deadpool 3 director Shawn Levy, who recently attended the Chiefs-Jets game with Swift and mutual friends Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, compared her directorial intuition to that of Steven Spielberg. “Taylor, the depth of her vision for how she wants a creative piece to be, whether it’s a lyric, a melody, a bridge, a concert tour, a video—it’s profound,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “It’s profoundly vivid, and she has the strength of her convictions.”

And lest we forget, Swift, who talked craft with Martin McDonagh last year, has long captured the devotion of one Paul Schrader. In 2018 Facebook posts, which have been recirculating, the First Reformed filmmaker said he had “crossed [something] off the bucket list” by seeing Swift’s Reputation tour on his 72nd birthday. He then declared, “About [Taylor Swift], however, let there be no doubt: she is the light that gives meaning to each to all our lives, the godhead who makes existence possible and without whom we would wander forever in bleak unimaginable darkness.” Who knew the DGA had so many Swifties lurking among its membership?