Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
The Force Awakens is rounding out the weekend with an unprecedented $238 millon domestic haul. That means the film has handily beat Jurassic World as the biggest opener ever. Worldwide, the film has already made $517 million – that record says with the dinos – but TFA doesn’t open in China until next month.
Variety has a rundown of the broken records.
The Force Awakens is heading for a $200 million opening weekend, according to the early estimates. That puts it in sight of Jurassic World’s $208.4M record, something many doubted would be possible due to the usual holiday box office trends.
Disney says that it brought in $57M from the Thursday night previews, with Friday showings likely bringing the total to $100M.
→ John Williams talks about the score with the Los Angeles Times, including what seems to have become the score’s standout, ‘Rey’s Theme’. Meanwhile, you can listen to the full score on several streaming services, including Spotify.
→ Daniel Craig made a cameo after all, according to Entertainment Weekly, though I’m also seeing a lot of skeptical fans due to… Accent reasons.
→ Is there a backlash yet? I guess?
→ Badass Digest looks at the Resistance, the First Order and the Republic. Y’all may want to pick up Pablo Hidalgo’s Visual Guide to the movie.
→ Speaking of today’s book releases, io9 has a look at some pieces from The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
→ And speaking of books in general, author Chuck Wendig on the movie – and which Aftermath character we saw on screen.
→ Also: Easter egg sightings from EW and Comicbook, Adam Driver on Kylo Ren’s mask, and TFA rules Twitter
According to Fandango (via Variety) The Force Awakens has moved the most tickets in the site’s history. Not just presales: Total sales of movies like Jurassic World and The Hunger Games. That doesn’t account for the other online ticket-sellers and in-person sales, but it’s still pretty impressive.
Just the other day, we heard (unofficially, but supposedly via a Disney source) that the film has passed the $100M mark in total presales.
The Force Awakens has already opened in several international territories, where it’s already brought in $14.1 million from early screenings. In France alone it took in $5.2 million, their biggest December opening day ever.
The Force Awakens’ advance ticket sales have passed the $100 million mark in North America, according to The Hollywood Reporter. That’s at least four times as much as the previous record holder, The Dark Knight Rises.
Don’t forget that the reviews – including mine – will come off embargo tonight at 12:01 a.m. PST (3:01 a.m. EST.) Don’t worry too much, we’ve been asked not to reveal spoilers. (There’s always the Force Block browser extension if you’re paranoid.)
→ Official featurette on your new favorite droid, BB-8, and a Force for Change highlight reel.
→ Slightly more women than men have been talking about The Force Awakens on Facebook, and Rey is the character driving the most anticipation for the film, according to a new survey.
→ Oscar Isaac is GQ’s latest cover dude. Meanwhile, in the Miami New Times, he’s interviewed by his brother, Mike Hernandez.
→ Lupita Nyong’o tells Ellen DeGeneres how she didn’t know that she was auditioning for Star Wars.
→ In /Film’s full J.J. Abrams interview, the director talks about developing the film
→ What does comedian Bill Hader have to do with BB-8?
→ You’ll never guess what some of the internet’s most disgruntled Expanded Universe fans are threatening to do now! Oh wait, you totally will, because it’s utterly pointless and deranged. That Force Block thing is looking pretty good about now, yeah?
→ Box office tracking estimates for the film came out today, and they are, as you might expect, pretty nuts. Oh, and it’s selling a lot of stuff.
→ If you really love hyperbole, Entertainment Weekly wants you to start thinking about The Force Awakens’ Oscar chances. Uhh, okay guys.
→ Yet another featurette, this time on BB-8, is coming to the Disney Channel on Sunday. Looking a bit further ahead, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill will be among the guests on Graham Norton’s Christmas show.
There’s a fairly epic gallery of props from The Force Awakens at Wired today. Lots of good stuff for weapons and helmet geeks. And yes, some of them do have very complicated names.
→ Mark Hamill on keeping secrets. (No, he’s not in mo-cap for Star Wars.)
→ The Force Awakens has already pulled in more than $50M in advance ticket sales, the Wall Street Journal reports.
→ Empire has a new Kylo Ren photo (not that different from several of the old Kylo Ren photos) and Adam Driver’s compares the character to a religious fanatic. (It’s Adam Driver’s birthday, by the way. He is 32.)
→ Check out a custom stormtrooper Fiat 500e, on display at the Los Angeles Auto Show.
→ The Hollywood Reporter on The Force Awakens’ Oscar chances. It’s not that kind of movie, kids, but knock yourselves out, I guess.
The Force Awakens has prompted “unprecedented ticketing demand,” according to online ticket seller Fandango. Traffic on the website seven times their usual peak, and they’ve sold “eight times as many tickets as we did on the first day of sales for the previous record holder.” The chain AMC says they sold out 1,000 shows in under 12 hours, while MovieTickets.com says The Force Awakens tickets accounted for 95% of sales yesterday.
Servers crashed left and right last night, and the Alamo Drafthouse chain even had to issue an apology.
If you don’t have tickets yet, many theaters are adding new shows, but I’d still grab them as soon as you can.
Before you start going off about how fast The Force Awakens is going to beat Jurassic World‘s box office record (yawn) be sure to listen to the latest Full of Sith. Predictive box office talk is usually beyond tedious, but there’s a lot of smart thinking here on summer movies vs. winter movies, how little it actually matters in our case, and other factors. (No, nobody is doubting it’s going to make a ton of money.)
→ Wild speculation alert: Kylo Ren and Ewoks? Well, someone has a burnt Vader helmet which likely originates on Endor, so sure, okay.
→ More evidence at the Irish Examiner that Star Wars may be returning to Skellig Michael.
→ Spoiler corner: At Making Star Wars, there’s the planet at the end of this film, and some new pics from Greenham Common set.
Thanks to Planete Star Wars, we now know that the French edition of Vanity Fair’s Star Wars issue has concept art of Han Solo and Poe Dameron, similar to the art we saw of Rey and Finn (who’s also featured) at Celebration. Why only in French, Vanity Fair? (For that matter, why no Poe outfit on display at Celebration?)
→ A Morgan Stanley analyst believes that The Force Awakens could become the third highest grossing film ever, behind Avatar and Titanic. Is he under or overestimating the film’s chances?
→ Star Wars 7 News says that Ken Leung (Lost) has a small role in The Force Awakens. It’s not a big leap to think he might, but this is SW7N.
Wall Street analysts estimate that The Force Awakens will make $1.75 billion. Previous predictions have ranged from $1.2B to $2B.