A documentary about Taylor Swift‘s Eras Tour has long been the stuff of rumor, and now it’s finally confirmed as the stuff of reality — but there’s much more to it than expected. The singer announced Monday that a six-part docuseries, “Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour | The End of an Era,” will premiere on Disney+ on Dec. 12, accompanied by the simultaneous release of a new concert film, “Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour | The Final Show,” shot at the tour finale in Vancouver, B.C.
As announced on “Good Morning America,” the documentary series is described as “an intimate look at Taylor’s life as her tour made headlines and thrilled fans around the world,” spotlighting “performers, family members, and friends” including tour opening acts Gracie Abrams and Sabrina Carpenter and guests Ed Sheeran and Florence Welch. The first two of the six episodes will go up for streaming on Dec. 12, with two more episodes at a time each of the two weeks after that.
The concert film bows at the same time as those first two docuseries installments. It will mark the first time fans have gotten a chance to see the material that was added to the Eras Tour from the “Tortured Poets Department” on the big screen. Her earlier “Eras Tour” theatrical concert film (which also eventually made its way to Disney+) was released before that album came out or songs from it were added to the tour set list.
A teaser trailer for the documentary lasting a minute and 39 seconds was released right after the announcement; watch it below.
“It was the End of an Era and we knew it,” Swift wrote in a post announcing the projects on her social media. “We wanted to remember every moment leading up to the culmination of the most important and intense chapter of our lives, so we allowed filmmakers to capture this tour and all the stories woven throughout it as it wound down. And to film the final show in its entirety.”
“Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour | The End of an Era” is directed by Don Argott, co-directed by Sheena M. Joyce and produced by Object & Animal. “Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour | The Final Show,” meanwhile, is directed by Glenn Weiss and produced by Taylor Swift Productions in association with Silent House Productions.
The concert movie will show viewers the Eras Tour finale that took place at BC Place Stadium in Vancouver on Dec. 8, 2023. (Read Variety‘s review of that show here.) Her setlist for that capper to the $2 billion-grossing, nearly two-year tour ran to 45 songs and included the additional “Female Rage: The Musical Segment” that had been added to the show after the release of “The Tortured Poets Department.” Additionally, the “surprise songs” segment for that show featured medleys of “A Place in This World”/”New Romantics” and “Long Live/New Year’s Day.” It wasn’t immediately revealed whether the concert film will include the entire length of the three-hour-plus show.
News of which platforms would be running with Swift’s next project — or, as it now turns out, projects — had already been tipped on Sunday, when the logos for Disney+ and Hulu were overlaid atop the Instagram image “GMA” posted teasing a big on-air announcement from Swift for Monday morning. There’s synergy aplenty there, with the reveal coming on the Disney-owned ABC.
The likely existence of a documentary and/or concert film had weighed heavy on Swifties’ minds ever since they noticed the presence of camera crews above and beyond what was needed to fill the arena’s big screens during the final show of the Eras Tour in Vancouver, B.C., in December 2023. A previous concert movie filmed on the tour, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” had already come out in theaters at that time.
The superstar previously took “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” to Disney+ in April 2024 after the film’s record-breaking run in theaters. Just as “Eras Tour” had quickly become the highest-grossing concert movie ever in cinemas in late 2023, when it went to Disney+ months later it set a record for initial streaming of a concert film, getting 4.6 million views on the platform in its first three days of availability. The tour film going exclusively to Disney+ was a sign Swift was pleased with how the platform handled the late 2020 release of her documentary “Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions.” (Swift previously had concert films or documentaries go out through Netflix and Apple.)
This new docuseries and concert film will both be bypassing theaters, unlike the “Eras Tour” concert movie of two years ago. But theater owners don’t have too much to complain about on the Swift front right now. She did just give them “Taylor Swift: The Release Party of a Showgirl,” an album-release promotional event which was No. 1 at the box office with a $33 million gross in theaters for a mere three-day run.
These Eras Tour projects will arrive on the heels of Swift not only topping the box office with “Release Party of a Showgirl” but topping the Billboard 200 with a record-breaking first week for the album “The Life of a Showgirl.” In only five days, it broke the high-water mark for an album in a single week, a record previously held by the debut outing for Adele’s “25” 10 years ago.
Besides ABC sharing a corporate parent with Disney+, Swift taking to ABC for this announcement made good on her long-time association with “Good Morning America” — coming a week after she seemed to be showing NBC all the love with appearances on Jimmy Fallon’s and Seth Myers’ late-night talk shows. Ratings showed that “The Tonight Show” came away with the best ratings in the 18-to-49 demo in eight months, and Myers’ “Late Night” had its top audience in that demo since January.
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