More than three months ago, my buddy Adam Aron, the C.E.O. of AMC Theatres and former winner of the coveted What I’m Hearing “Villain of the Year” honor, got a call from a friend who also happened to know Scott Swift. Per sources, this mutual friend informed Aron that Mr. Swift, the father of Taylor Swift, had a “crazy idea” and wanted to chat. It seemed the Swifts had been disappointed in their discussions with a couple Hollywood studios about distributing a planned concert film of Taylor’s current tour show. Might Aron be interested in bypassing those studios and putting Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour directly in theaters?      

Uh… A Taylor Swift concert film? Exclusively in cinemas just months after the North American leg of her tour contributed to a likely $1.4 billion total gross when it’s done, according to Pollstar, and at a time when traditional studio movies are being bumped to 2024 amid the SAG-AFTRA strike? And without the traditional studio distributor middleman? AMC and the other chains have done concert stunts in the past, of course, and in 2021, AMC exclusively played a Chance the Rapper movie, but the world’s biggest music star teaming with the world’s biggest theater company on a film that could play for months is as close to a no-brainer as exists in entertainment. And for Aron, it was a gift at a time when his company has been teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. (AMC declined to comment; Team Swift’s publicist, Tree Paine, did not respond.)