“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” is getting its theatrical debut on December 18, 2015 as the seventh installment in the film franchise and the first of the third trilogy.
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Will you keep watching the new “Star Wars” promotional footage as it’s released, or are you trying to remain as spoiler free as possible?
That’s double the size of the previous record-holder, “The Dark Knight Rises”, which netted $25 million in pre-sales in 2012. Most Imax screenings have sold out, but outside of those premium formats, there are tickets remaining of many shows on opening weekend. No movie has opened to more than $100 million in December, with the $85 million bow for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey still holding the month’s record. Force Awakens will hit $1 billion without blinking. Emotionally, I’m thinking, “Are you kidding me?!?” The director who started out idolizing Akira Kurosawa, wrote an early treatment of Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” and made his first film, “THX 1138”, about dehumanization can go back to his experimental side. The movie also has a much bigger Chinese box office to tap.
So far the footage has been viewed more than 564,000 times on YouTube so it looks like the stunt was successful in getting the word out.
This highlights two things: “Fantastic Four” is, unquestionably, one of the biggest flops of all time (it cost a whopping $120 million) and “The Force Awakens” is on pace for the biggest opening weekend of all-time.
Global fans of Star Wars are rejoicing, with the All Nippon Airway’s (ANA) Star Wars themed jet beginning its worldwide flight schedules today. Elsewhere there were the standard aversions to George Lucas’ directing style (or lack thereof) and his baffling approach to standard English usage.
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When asked who his favorite character from “Star Wars” movie is, Lucas initially said he likes all characters from the film and then eventually said “Jarjar Binx”.
