Taylor Swift‘s concert film is still playing in Israel — this despite some who thought she’d yanked the flick to make a political statement … which we’ve learned ain’t the case at all.
Here’s the deal … the ‘Eras’ movie just started hitting cinemas in Israel last week — the first time it’d reached that territory as the international rollout continues — and folks were happy to go see it.
However, come Monday … some were having technical issues in snapping up tickets for this week, and as a result — a frenzy started to ensue over the perceived halt.
As far as what exactly the problem was … people who were going to Taylor’s official website for the ‘Eras’ movie could not pull up Israeli locations at all. When you searched for Israel, the site automatically kicked users to other areas in the Middle East … like Lebanon.
As a result, a lot of people started jumping to conclusions, and speculating that Taylor and/or her team had done this intentionally … as a way to signal their stance on Israel-Palestine.
Of course, Taylor’s close friendship with Gigi Hadid — with whom she had just dined this past weekend — also jumped into people’s minds … as they assumed this (would-be) move to yank the flick in Israeli theaters was a result of GH getting into T-Swift’s ear on this issue.
That couldn’t be further from the truth though … because, as of right now — people can access those Israel tickets from her site … and we have an explanation for what happened that made it inaccessible in the first place.
As it turns out … we’re told there’s actually a third-party company that deals with posting Taylor’s worldwide showtimes on her official ‘Eras’ movie website — aka, this isn’t something she or her team deal with themselves.
It’s unclear what the holdup was in uploading this week’s showtimes … but rest assured it was merely a delay on the third-party company’s part, and we’re told the issue has now been rectified — with showings available for purchase in and around Israel.
Long story short … there is NO political statement that Taylor is trying to take here, and she was NOT trying to stick it to Israel over what’s going on in Gaza.
We did extra digging on this to make sure it wasn’t just a pivot only after people noticed, BTW … because even while tickets in Israel were temporarily not available to the public on TS’s site, we confirmed you could still go to individual Israeli theater chains/sites and purchase tickets there — which just speak to this someone dragging their feet by mistake.
It’s all fixed now, though … and Israeli Taylor fans can enjoy her this week as well. Her movie screens Thursday through Sunday — so go reserve your seats, if you’re inclined.
