The Power Of Taylor Swift Compels The Exorcist: Believer To Change Its Release Date
The Devil works hard, but Taylor Alison Swift works harder.
On August 31, 2023, the pop superstar announced that her record-breaking, continent-spanning Eras Tour — which is on a break until November, where it will resume in Asia — is coming to a theater near you on October 13, 2023, and you don't have to spend hours in a brutal battle with Ticketmaster this time around. It's not surprising that the professionally shot version of the Eras Tour was always going to happen, as cameras were spotted throughout several of Swift's shows in Los Angeles. What is surprising is that major horror franchises are getting out of her way and changing their movies' release dates to accommodate the pop princess.
Upon seeing that the Eras Tour will come to AMC theaters in North America on October 13, Jason Blum of Blumhouse Productions officially announced that he was changing the release date of "The Exorcist: Believer." On Twitter, Blum simply said — in a reference to Swift's "reputation" single "Look What You Made Me Do" — "Look what you made me do. The Exorcist: Believer moves to 10/6/23." Blum added the hashtag "#TaylorWins" to that first tweet; earlier, he'd written one that simply reads "#Exorswift." Tickets to the Eras Tour's cinematic debut are already sold out all over North America, so clearly, Blum didn't want to compete with someone as big as Taylor Swift... which is definitely understandable.
Jason Blum is smart to let Taylor Swift have October 13 all to herself
Blumhouse has made most of the biggest horror hits in recent history, but Blum is smart to, as he put it, let Swift "win." The Eras Tour, when all is said and done, will tour Asia and Europe before returning to North America for yet another leg, and all of this extends into 2024. During the initial U.S. leg, which kicked off on March 17, 2023 in Glendale, Arizona, Swift drew packed stadium crowds for every single performance — plus extra crowds of people without tickets gathering in the parking lot to listen at some shows — and it's been proven that she even managed to boost the economies of each city she performed in along the way. According to a feature in Time Magazine about the sheer economics of the Eras Tour, the tour could gross around $5 billion, and Time quoted a GlobalNewsWire story where expert Dan Fleetwood said, "If Taylor Swift were an economy, she'd be bigger than 50 countries."
All of this is to say that it's no wonder Blum backed off as soon as he found out he'd share a release date with Swift's filmed Eras Tour — which will allow Swift fans who couldn't best Ticketmaster and score a ticket a chance to see the outstanding career retrospective. (Plus, he must be a Swiftie; he cleverly ceded the 13th, and 13 is famously Swift's lucky number.) It's possible, though, that he's just trying to curry favor. Maybe this is all just a ploy on Blum's part to get Taylor Swift behind the camera for a Blumhouse production; after all, she's set to write and direct a feature film sometime soon. Why not a horror flick next?