“Star Wars” fans in Los Angeles will need to use more than just the Force to get tickets for certain opening-night showings of the feverishly anticipated new movie in Disney’s space saga.
Big money will be required, too. After huge demand for pre-sale tickets, which were made available last week after the debut of the movie’s full-length trailer, scalpers online are asking as much as $375 a seat for first screenings of “The Force Awakens,” which will open Dec. 18. One eBay seller last week was offering four tickets for opening night at iPic Theaters Pasadena for $1,500.
Disney did not return calls for comment regarding the exorbitant secondary market costs.
Meanwhile, Hollywood’s TCL Chinese Theatre is adding round-the-clock screenings to cope with demand, and several other local theaters are expected to stay open 24 hours, just as a handful did for the opening weekends of 2012’s “The Avengers” and “The Dark Knight Rises.”
Movie ticket site Fandango Media, headquartered in West Los Angeles, has broken its previous pre-sales record eight times over as eager fans snap up tickets to the much anticipated franchise reboot helmed by J.J. Abrams. The record had been held by 2012’s “The Hunger Games.” The new mark has been reached despite the site buckling from the strain of traffic last week, which slowed service and frustrated customers. Fandango declined to disclose the exact number of tickets sold. The company takes a convenience fee between 75 cents and $2 on each purchase, depending on a theater’s location.
“With such extraordinary demand, we saw intermittent technical challenges that caused some customers to queue online longer than expected,” the company said in a statement.
Fandango’s technical headaches were shared by several other ticket sites around the world that also crashed under massive demand after the Oct. 19 on-sale date.
“This movie opening is a quasireligious event,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at the Sherman Oaks office of audience measurement firm Rentrak. “There’s never been anything like it and that unprecedented interest suggests records will tumble. I’ll put my butt in the bacon slicer and say this could be the biggest movie ever.”
Another sci-fi epic, “Avatar,” released in 2009, is the current all-time champ at the box office with global earnings of $2.78 billion.
Record breaker
These types of predictions are a triumph for the cross-platform marketing muscle of Burbank’s Walt Disney Co., which bought “Star Wars” maker Lucasfilm Ltd. for $4.05 billion in 2012.
The studio has gradually built hype for “Force Awakens” with strategically staggered releases of trailers, posters, products and promotional events.
The entertainment empire is taking a big business bet on “Star Wars,” commissioning a string of follow-up films and adding “Star Wars” lands to Disneyland in Anaheim and Hollywood Studios theme park in Orlando, Fla. However, licensing revenue from new “Star Wars” products tied to the sequel is expected to easily cover the film’s projected $200 million budget.
“When we bought Lucasfilm three years ago, we were excited about making new ‘Star Wars’ films,” said Chief Executive Bob Iger at Disney’s D23 Expo in Anaheim this summer. “But we were also excited about bringing the characters to every corner of the company.”
The media giant managed to keep that process seamless, said Rentrak’s Dergarabedian.
“Their ebb and flow of information was perfect to achieve the maximum result,” he said of Disney’s efforts. “A success like this doesn’t happen by accident. Disney have been perfect custodians of the franchise.”
Virtual lines
Preview screenings of the film will begin in most major cities on the evening of Dec. 17, and those first-night shows are now sold out at TCL Chinese Theatre, which is presenting the movie in Imax 3-D for a ticket price of $19.50. The original “Star Wars” film premiered at the landmark in 1977, where it played for an entire year.
Even though die-hard fans already have their tickets, theater chiefs are expecting many to camp out for days in advance to experience “Star Wars” the old-fashioned way – a ritual the exhibitor is happy to accommodate.
“Fans in Los Angeles and from around the world are rushing to see the new movie here because it’s the best theater on the planet and history surrounds you when you watch a ‘Star Wars’ film at this location,” said theater spokesman Jerry Brown.
However, that’s forced some local fans to look elsewhere, such as Los Feliz actress Belinda Gosbee, who wound up buying tickets to a Dec. 17 showing at the Pacific Glendale 18.
“I didn’t manage to get my first choice of the Chinese Theater,” said Gosbee, though she’s not letting that dampen her enthusiasm. “I’m so excited to be one of the very first people in town to see the movie I’ve waited so long for – and I think it’s going to be great.”
