In this era of event films, the launch of pre-sale tickets is just as important as a trailer in the marketing plan for studios. Sure, getting a trailer to go viral is great and all, but that’s expected. What really gets people talking nowadays are box office records. And for the upcoming Saga-ending “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” people are expecting records.
Thankfully, for Disney and Lucasfilm, it appears that ‘Skywalker’ is living up to the pre-sales hype. At least, according to Atom Tickets.
READ MORE: ‘Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker’ Trailer: The Skywalker Saga Ends Here
The online ticketseller is claiming (via CNBC) that the first hour of sales for “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” has outsold “Avengers: Endgame” by a whopping 45%. Now, these sorts of stats seem to come out around the release of every major “event” film. Back when ‘Endgame’ went up for pre-sale, months before release, there were reports of ticketing sites like Fandango, AMC, and Atom experiencing technical difficulties and regularly selling out screenings, shattering records. So, if ‘Skywalker’ is on pace with that, at least anecdotally, that’s pretty impressive.
Now, this doesn’t mean that the massive opening weekend records of ‘Endgame’ are going to be broken by this new “Star Wars” film. Even though the records were set just months ago, it would appear that the domestic record of $357 million and the worldwide opening of $1.223 billion are well out of the reach of ‘Skywalker.’ The international number, in particular, seems safe considering that historically, the Lucasfilm franchise doesn’t do well in China, and that country was one of the biggest for the ‘Avengers’ sequel.
That being said, much of the same reasoning that made ‘Endgame’ such a must-see event –the end of a Saga, the end of certain actors in the universe, the culmination of multiple franchises– seems to be at play here too. Perhaps if the early buzz and reviews are solid, this could mean that ‘Skywalker’ might have a shot at $300 million domestically opening weekend. Obviously, it’s far too early to tell. But it sure is fun to speculate.
Either way, tickets for the film are on sale now and seem to be doing pretty well.