Direct a film or Female Rage: The Musical – what will Taylor Swift do next?
How do you follow the highest-grossing tour to date? Here’s what the pop megastar could be lining up.
What do you do after pulling off a pop music coup? When you’re the highest-grossing touring musician in history, simply planning the next album or gig might feel a little … been there, done that. But there is no doubt Taylor Swift has a road map.
“She says she pretty much plans her life five years out,” I’m told by someone who really knows: Tyler Conroy, This Morning’s 32-year-old Taylor Swift correspondent, who is back on the show now the Eras tour has arrived in the UK.
She is famous for leaving “Easter egg” clues about her life in her work and the latest mystery among Swift sleuths is a particularly intriguing new trademark she has filed: could it indicate her future direction of travel?
The 34-year-old star is “particularly well known for using the trademark system”, says William Miles, a partner at the intellectual property firm Briffa. Swift already owns more than 300 trademarks in America, ranging from her cats’ names (Benjamin Button, Meredith Grey and Olivia Benson) to “SwiftCon” and the lyric “Nice to meet you, where you been?” (from her song Blank Space), in an effort to stop unauthorised hustlers profiting from unofficial merchandise and events.
Is she our most trademark-savvy musician? “She’s got to be up there,” Miles says. Certainly she has a better hit rate than Mariah Carey, who failed to trademark Queen of Christmas in 2022.
The latest legal excitement started when one keen-eyed Swiftie noted that she had applied to trademark Female Rage: The Musical on May 11. This is a phrase she has used to describe the new Tortured Poets Department segment she has added to the Eras show. But is it also a sign that she is eyeing a move to Broadway?
“She’s a classic musical theatre girl: she was in a production of Annie, The Sound of Music [at school], she used to go to theatre camp,” Conroy says. She was also about the only good thing in the infamous movie of the musical Cats. And now her longtime producer Jack Antonoff is the composer for a new version of Romeo and Juliet opening on Broadway on September 26. “So she might take notes from that. I’m excited because I feel like now we’re one step closer to the Taylor Swift musical.”
Plus, the Eras tour “is basically a Broadway show”, says Conroy, who has seen it three times. “The way it’s produced, the pace of it, the way she intertwines storylines, the choreography … I do think it’s proving to people that she’s ready to do a full musical.”
It hasn’t always gone well for pop stars who have attempted this transition in the past. The Variety theatre critic David Benedict points to the example of Rufus Wainwright’s Opening Night, starring Sheridan Smith, which recently closed early. There are others: “Tori Amos wrote The Light Princess for the National Theatre: didn’t work. Paul Simon wrote a musical for Broadway called The Capeman: didn’t work. PJ Harvey just did London Tide at the National: didn’t work. The Pet Shop Boys wrote a musical with Jonathan Harvey called Closer to Heaven: didn’t work.” That said, “Cyndi Lauper wrote the score for Kinky Boots and it was very successful.” So there is hope.
And Swift has other options. “We know that she does have a feature film coming out,” Conroy reminds me, referring to the deal she signed with Searchlight Pictures in 2022 to direct her first movie. The Eras tour film has grossed a record $US262 million ($392.8m); next it will be time for Swift to go behind the camera, having already directed the music videos for her songs The Man, Bejeweled and All Too Well.
This also won’t be an easy transition. Madonna’s 2008 comedy-drama Filth and Wisdom with Vicky McClure and Richard E Grant was panned by most critics. Frank Sinatra’s 1965 Second World War film None But the Brave wasn’t a roaring success either.
When Swift’s film deal was announced, Oscar-winning actor Laura Dern, who played the wicked stepmother to the pop star’s Cinderella on Bejeweled, insisted on the UnWrapped podcast that Swift is “a real-deal filmmaker”. Would Dern take a role in a feature film directed by her? “Wherever she wants to go, I’ll show up.”
The Times
