Taylor Swift to Make Directorial Debut For Searchlight Pictures

Fresh off the acclaim for her directorial work on the 14-minute All Too Well: The Short Film, Taylor Swift will be taking her talents to the big screen. Searchlight Pictures announced on Friday morning (Dec. 9) that Swift will make her feature directorial debut for the studio with an unnamed film for which she wrote the original script.

“Taylor is a once in a generation artist and storyteller,” said Searchlight presidents David Greenbaum and Matthew Greenfield in a statement announcing the project. “It is a genuine privilege to collaborate with her as she embarks on this exciting and new creative journey.” Swift made history recently when she became the first artists to ever win three video of the year awards at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards and only the second female to direct the winning best longform video winner (for All Too Well: The Short Film).

Swift wrote and directed the 14-minute All Too Well short, which recently screened at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival. Though there are scant details about Swift’s feature directorial debut, The Hollywood Reporter noted that during her TIFF talk, the singer shouted out women directors including Nora Ephron, Chloe Zhao and Greta Gerwig as her directorial influences.

On Thursday, Swift pulled back the curtain on her direction of the heartbreaking “All Too Well” clip starring Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien in an Instagram post. The behind-the-scenes footage finds a pony-tailed Swift describing to the actors in detail how they should be feeling in the moment, sometimes trading places with them and tracking their approximate movements for them.

“The first seeds of this short film were planted over ten years ago, and I’ll never forget the behind the scenes moments of the shoot,” she wrote in her caption to her post. “I owe everything to @sadiesink_, Dylan O’Brien, my incredible DP @the_rinayang and my producer @saulysaulysauly.”

The All Too Well video — which is eligible for short film submission at the upcoming 95the annual Academy Awards — followed up Swift’s previous stints behind the camera helming the clips for her directorial debut with “The Man” from her 2019 Lover album, as well as her direction on clips for “Cardigan” and “Willow.”

In addition to a brief role in David O. Russell’s just-released drama Amsterdam, Swift has acted in a number of other films, including Cats, The Giver, Valentine’s Day and The Lorax.