Star Wars Ticket Sales Are Breaking Records Yet Again

Tickets for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker went on sale on Monday, and it’s already breaking all sorts of sales records.  Again.  Because that’s what Star Wars and Disney do now.

At this point, are any of us surprised when installments of the main Star Wars series break records?  The Force Awakens was the fastest movie to reach $1 billion globally, and set several dozen other global and regional records during its run.  Though not as ground breaking, The Last Jedi also broke some records in 2017.  The standalone films don’t have quite the same record-breaking prowess as the main films, but they at the very least hold their own at the box office (yes, even Solo).  Now that The Rise of Skywalker has begun selling tickets, the box office record news is starting to come in just as expected.

The first record broken is from the ticket seller Atom.  The Rise of Skywalker sold more tickets in the first hour than any other film in the history of the seller.  It sold 2.5 times the amount of tickets as The Last Jedi did in the same period and 45% more than Avengers: Endgame.  There seems to be some debate about whether The Rise of Skywalker beat Endgame for the most sales on day one over all, with some saying it came in second place and others saying it beat that record, too.

The film also smashed records at Fandango.  It has sold more tickets than any other Star Wars film through the website, and accounted for half of the website’s ticket sales on Monday.  The website didn’t crash like it did with Endgame, thankfully, but that’s because they learned their lesson last spring and made some adjustments to their website accordingly.  Just because you didn’t get shut out doesn’t mean it wasn’t performing as well.  Fandango just got better.

You’ll notice a pattern with all these record-breaking films.  All these franchises are the last in their respective sagas and all these franchises are owned by Disney.  It’s a good formula, it seems.  While Endgame isn’t the end of all things MCU, it’s certainly the end of the Infinity Saga, and fans were eager to race to grab tickets for opening night.  Likewise, The Rise of Skywalker isn’t the last Star Wars property coming our way, but it’ll be the last Skywalker saga film, closing out a franchise over 40 years in the making.

I grabbed my ticket as soon as I could.  I was flying when they initially went on sale, but my plane landed within 10 minutes and I grabbed the last non-front row ticket for the 6pm showing on December 19th.  I felt extremely lucky being able to grab it when I could, as friends who checked in just a little while later were forced to choose the later showing (and had to select kind of crappy seats on top of that).  I’m grateful my flight wasn’t delayed or I’d have been screwed.

How many more records will it smash?  Will it keep nudging Endgame out of the top spot on every list?  I’m intrigued to see this play out.  But no matter which records it breaks or falls short of breaking, Disney will ultimately be the long term winner.

Author: Angel Wilson

Angel is the admin of The Geekiary and a geek culture commentator. They earned a BA in Film & Digital Media from UC Santa Cruz. They have contributed to various podcasts and webcasts including An Englishman in San Diego, Free to Be Radio, and Genre TV for All. They identify as queer.

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