Yesterday news hit the web that advance ticket sales for
J.J. Abrams movie are at $50M, and sources in exhibition pre-sales this morning tell me that figure is at $54M and could rise to $100M by the time the film debuts on Dec. 18. Here's why:
Disney has only run a minimal part of its ad campaign. One non-Disney source says that figure is as low as 5% and is going to swell this coming week as we head into Thanksgiving, a prime time for eyeballs at the multiplex. Furthermore, we're also a month out from opening. The fact that
Force Awakens has reached $54M in advance tickets sales is stunning for both distributors and exhibs.
With nearly a month to go, Fandango's pre-sales for
Force Awakens have already topped the total pre-sales of their previous record holder, the first
Hunger Games movie, back in 2012. Fans are even buying advance tickets beyond opening weekend, through Christmas week and into 2016, while theater chains are continually posting new showtimes on Fandango to meet the fan demand. Imax reported yesterday that
Force Awakens is their current record pre-seller at $18M. Imax reps a third of digital and large format screens, and its domestic build out will reach close to 400 hubs in time for
Force Awakens. Despite these record pre-sales figures, there are still millions of tickets left for opening weekend. Keep in mind, when Disney/Marvel's
The Avengers hit a $207.4M opening, the average theater had a capacity of 63%, so it wasn't a total sell-out situation.
With such lofty advance sales, that near $300M opening may not be so crazy now. Said one rival major studio marketing chief, "When it comes to the opening of
Star Wars: Force Awakens, there isn't an opening that would surprise me. You could put a 2, a 3 or a 4 in front of it. Nothing would shock me."
In fact the B.O. projection math per one exhibitor that gets us to a near $300M opening goes as follows: 12,000 auditoriums X 225 seats X $10 ticket X 18 shows a day X a 60% occupancy=$291.6M. Since
Force Awakens has a running time of 2 hours and 15 minutes, exhibitors will be able to show the film as much as 18-24 times a day on 3-4 screens. While that's a normal number of showtimes for any city multiplex, sources believe that even suburban venues will pump up their showtimes for this movie beyond their typical norms.
