Twitter Is Joking About How Taylor Swift Scared Off The Exorcist On Friday The 13th

The only thing that’s scarier than The Exorcist is... Taylor Swift? On Aug. 31, the singer surprised the world by announcing that she’s taking her record-breaking Eras Tour to movie theaters, releasing a new concert film in North American cinemas on Oct. 13, to match her famous lucky number. As a result, Universal Pictures bumped up the release of their upcoming horror film The Exorcist: Believer by one week, giving up their spooky premiere date in order to avoid competing with Swift.

Director Jason Blum confirmed the schedule change on Twitter, using a Swift pun of course. Look what you made me do,” he wrote, referring to her 2017 Reputation single, before confirming that The Exorcist: Believer will now be released in theaters on Oct. 6. For his punchline, he used the hashtag #TaylorWins.

Initially, movie bluffs were looking forward to having another polar opposite double feature at movie theaters this year, a.k.a. the next Barbenheimer, which occurred when Greta Gerwig’s pink-and-plastic Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s atomic bomb film Oppenheimer were both released on July 21, making for very different movie-going experiences. Barbie won out at the box office, but Oppenheimer still benefited from the Barbenheimer hype, becoming the highest-grossing film to not reach the top spot of the box office.

Therefore, Swift and The Exorcist could’ve formed “The Exorswift” if the premiere date stayed in tact. Instead, fans took to Twitter to joke about how Swift was powerful enough to scare off the literal devil in The Exorcist movies.

However, many people on Twitter were upset by the change, believing that Universal should have embraced Swift mania and kept The Exorcist’s premiere date as scheduled. Fans of both Swift and horror movies mourned what could have been “The Exorswift” (even though that can still happen if they just wait a week to see the new Exorcist movie).

If Universal really wanted the top spot at the box office for at least one weekend, they made the right decision. After Swift revealed the Eras Tour concert film, AMC experienced delays and virtual queues to buy tickets (though not nearly as long as Ticketmaster’s). By the end of the day, the film earned over $26 million in presales (double her lucky number) at AMC, breaking their single-day ticket sales record that was previously held by Spider-Man: No Way Home, and since this number is just for AMC theaters, the overall presale numbers are definitely higher.

Movie ticketing website Fandango also revealed that Swift broke their record for the biggest first-day ticket sales for 2023, saying its presale grosses ranked among blockbusters like Avengers: Endgame and Star Wars: The Force Awakens without giving exact sales figures. Yes, this means Swift just may be more powerful than Marvel as well.