'Swifties' fill theater seats for screenings of 'Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour'
Kelsey Lehane, left, Adriana Webster and Hailey Margulies wear costumes inspired by singer Taylor Swift outside the AMC Shore 8 theater in Huntington on Friday evening. Credit: John Roca
Swiftmania began in earnest Friday evening as Long Islanders showed up for screenings of “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” the singer’s hotly anticipated concert film of her current world tour.
“I love all her songs, I have all her albums,” said Gia Tuthill, 10, of East Northport, standing outside Huntington’s AMC Shore 8 before a 6 p.m. screening and showing off her 10 homemade bracelets — one for each of the singer’s albums. “She says to make friendship bracelets and pass them around, so obviously, I had to.”
“The Eras Tour,” a nearly three-hour sampling of Swift’s six-night stand at the SoFi Stadium in southern California this past August, is expected to be a box-office juggernaut that could rival “Barbie.” Predictions for its opening weekend gross are running as high as $150 million or more. Though the film was initially set to debut Friday, demand was so great that shows were added for the day before, Thursday. Swift’s current concert tour is estimated to bring in a total of $2 billion by the time it wraps up late next year.
Gia Tuthill, 10, came to the AMC Shore 8 theater in Huntington on Friday for one of the first showings of the Taylor Swift concert film. Credit: John Roca
For many fans, the movie is a chance to get a glimpse of Swift’s tour, which broke a Ticketmaster record for the most tickets sold for an artist — more than 2 million — in a single day.
“We tried so hard to get tickets but we just couldn’t,” Shelley Freeman, 39, of Commack, said of the tour. She and her 13-year-old daughter, Kaelyn Sullivan, showed up for a 7 p.m. screening of the movie — but even that won’t be enough for Kaelyn, who said she plans to see Swift live in Toronto next year thanks to a relative who was lucky enough to get seats.
“She’s, like, inspirational,” Kayla said of the singer while wearing a homemade T-shirt emblazoned with the titles of Swift’s albums. “She believes in woman power.”
That sentiment was echoed by other Swifties — as the singer’s fans have come to be called — including three girls who arrived at the theater wearing matching white tank tops and pink sequined skirts inspired by Swift’s “Lover” album from 2019. One, Kelsey Lehane, 12, of Coram, said she admired Swift because “she writes her own songs and they’re about her life.”
Lehane’s companion Hailey Margulies, 11, of Miller Place, called Swift “an amazing, kind person.”
Friday evening promised to get even busier at the theater, which had multiple screens playing “The Eras Tour” at least 22 times. Several screenings, including two late-night show times at 11:30, were already sold out.
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