Star of Episode VII, Daisy Ridley, also has some good news for Star Wars fans – the script for Episode VIII is “very good”.
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The seventh installment of the lucrative “Star Wars” franchise hit theaters with a bang Friday – with pre-ticket sales suggesting a possible $100 million-plus opening weekend in the USA alone.
Rentrak’s Paul Dergarabedian, one of Hollywood’s best-known box office analysts, said the film’s opening night performance in the United States and Canada “portends a massive and potentially record-breaking opening day and weekend for the film”.
The trailers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens were nothing short of exemplary.
The ticket sales figures from Walt Disney Co. late Friday indicated that the film could eclipse the $US208.8 million record set by dinosaur adventure film Jurassic World in June. The Hobbit got close with an $86 million opening weekend, and American Sniper grossed $89 when it went wide, but Star Wars is absolutely setting a new bar for December relases.
The original release that launched this entire franchise, 1977’s “Star Wars”, is still the second-biggest film ever ($1.49 billion) when adjusted for inflation – trailing only the 1939 classic “Gone With the Wind” ($1.68 billion).
Exhibitor Relations analyst Jeff Bock said: “It might join the $2bn club worldwide, and maybe, just maybe, be the highest-grossing film of all-time”. The record is held by “Avatar” with $2.8 billion.
It seems, the Force is all around us-on the news, at the stores, and on Twitter.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest later appeared at the press room dais flanked by two Star Wars stormtroopers, along with R2D2. “So I’ll try to be relatively succinct”, the US President said at the beginning of his year ender press conference on Friday. Soon to begin was a screening of the film for families who have lost a relative to combat or service-related injuries.
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Star Wars frenzy has swept the celeb world with anyone and everyone getting involved.
