Via Latimes.com:
In one sense, it was just an ordinary trailer, a 2 1/2-minute sneak peek at a movie that won’t hit theaters for two months. It wasn’t even the film’s first trailer — it was the third.
But when it comes to the “Star Wars” franchise, nothing has ever been ordinary.
When the Walt Disney Co. and Lucasfilm unveiled the final teaser for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” during halftime of the New York Giants-Philadelphia Eagles football game Monday evening, it set off a disturbance in the Force unlike anything Hollywood has seen in years.
The ensuing clamor among fans wanting to share in the moment and the frenzy of early ticket sales that crashed theater chains’ servers was a testament not just to audiences’ abiding love for the space-opera series but also to a carefully orchestrated marketing campaign that, with the film’s Dec. 18 release date drawing ever nearer, has made the jump to hyperspace, leveraging Disney’s entire arsenal of media assets.
Big-budget spectacles are the film industry’s bread and butter, of course, with a new one coming down the pike nearly every weekend. But “Star Wars” has long been in a category by itself. What was once an out-of-left-field sci-fi film that drew just a smattering of curious comic-book enthusiasts at the 1976 Comic-Con convention in San Diego has grown over the past four decades into something closer to a national pastime and, for some, almost a quasi-religion.
“The Force Awakens” — which arrives 10 years after the last installment in the series — is the first “Star Wars” film of the social media age, exponentially amplifying and quickening word-of-mouth reactions that, in the franchise’s early days, would unfold over days and weeks.
In the first hour after the “Force Awakens” teaser aired, 1.3 million people interacted with it on Facebook, while “Star Wars”-related tweets came at the furious pace of 17,000 per minute, as fans dissected every frame for clues about the film’s plot. Meanwhile, viewership for ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” spiked heading into halftime, indicating many viewers had tuned in specifically to see the new clip.
The trailer’s release was coordinated with the launch of advance ticket sales, and eager fans by the thousands quickly leaped at the chance to lock in seats for the film’s first showings. Though such early ticket sales for highly anticipated movies are now standard with major franchises like “The Avengers” and “The Hunger Games,” the volume of orders proved overwhelming to an unprecedented degree, causing several sites — including Fandango, the leading online ticket purveyor — to go down. Despite the technical difficulties, AMC Theatres, the second-largest theater chain in the country, sold out more than 1,000 shows nationwide in less than 12 hours.
That the film will reap massive box office returns is undeniable — the only question is how massive.
“When it finishes its run it’s going to be one of the biggest movies, if not the biggest, ever to come out of theaters,” said Ken Thewes, chief marketing officer for Regal Entertainment Group, which operates the nation’s largest theater chain.
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