Taylor Tops the Weekend Box Office. No. 2 ‘The Exorcist: Believer’ Didn’t Turn as Many Heads

The concert movie "Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour" topped the weekend movie box office with a projected $96 million in gross sales at domestic theaters, according to the Internet Movie Database.

The film captures an Aug. 9 performance at SoFi Stadium near Los Angeles, the last stop on the first leg of her sold-out Eras Tour. The anticipated weekend earnings already would make it the highest-grossing concert film ever. A deal inked between Taylor Swift’s production team and the AMC movie theater chain — bypassing major Hollywood studies — means the film is likely to turn a significant profit for both Swift and AMC.

The Exorcist: Believer, a revival of the iconic horror movie franchise that began in 1973, made a projected $11 million in North American theaters this weekend, enough to put it in second place.

With more than $84 million in worldwide grosses against a reported budget of $30 million, the movie is well on its way to a solid profit. But Universal Pictures, which paid a reported $400 million for the rights to the franchise, will need similarly strong returns on any sequels in order to make its money back.

In third place for the weekend with a projected $7 million domestic box office haul was Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie, a film based on the long-running and popular children’s cartoon.

So far the film has made more than $126 worldwide — the movie had a reported budget of around $30 million — approaching the worldwide grosses of the 2021 Paw Patrol movie, which raked in $144 million during its theatrical run.

The tenth film in the Saw franchise, Saw X, came in fourth for the weekend with a projected domestic box office haul of $5.7 million.

The film recasts long-time series antagonist John Kramer — who goes by the alias “Jigsaw” — as the hero, pitting him against criminals running a scam hospital in Mexico.

With more than $71 million in worldwide grosses on the latest entry, fans of the series can expect to see an 11th film in the franchise.

Finishing a disappointing fifth, with a projected $4.3 million domestic box office haul, was Rogue One director Gareth Edwards’ sci-fi thriller The Creator, which takes place during a future war between humans and AI.

The film is in its third weekend and has so far grossed just over $79 million worldwide. The 20th Century Studios production had an $80 million budget.