| Date | |
|---|---|
| Author | Zoe Aresti |
Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in London this evening and finally comes to cinemas across the country from midnight. The unprecedented demand seen for the release of the film is leading to speculation that The Force Awakens has the potential to be THE biggest film of all time.
Star Wars has already broken records, with advance ticket sales for the film also extremely strong. A record 200,000 plus tickets were sold in the first 24 hours of going on sale, beating marks for Skyfall, Spectre, The Hunger Games and Fifty Shades of Grey. DCM has forecast nearly 10m DCM admissions overall for the film. ODEON this week reported that the film has now sold half a million tickets for the opening week at its cinemas alone.
Worldwide, The Force Awakens has already sold in excess of $50 million worth of tickets a whole month before the first doors to the first screenings are opened.
So, will Star Wars: The Force Awakens be the biggest movie ever?
DCM’s Head of Film, Tom Linay, recently contributed to a recent piece on Forbes, saying that he believes that the only thing that could holding the film back from achieving the best box office of all time is not financial but human.
“The Force Awakens is better placed than any film since Avatar to have a crack at that film’s worldwide box office total, but perhaps the biggest thing working against The Force Awakens is it’s not directed by James Cameron,” Linay explains. “Cameron has proved himself better than any other director at creating movie events that people who go to the cinema once a year, and perhaps even less frequently, feel like they have to see on the big screen, and that’s what The Force Awakens needs to do.”
“If it is as good as people hope it will be, then it has the potential to do that, but a lot will depend on strong word of mouth to get people who aren’t big Star Wars fans into the cinema. Since Avatar, no film has come within $1.1 billion of that film’s final total of $2.8 billion, so it’s a huge ask for The Force Awakens. Earlier this year, Jurassic World was heralded as something of a box office phenomenon and that finished up on $1.7 billion.”
“Having said that, if it grosses over $700 million in North America and over £100 million in the UK, which it looks likely to do, then it will be pretty close to $1 billion, before we factor in the rest of the world. If I had to stick my neck on the line, I’d say it will be the first film not directed by James Cameron to cross $2 billion, but it will fall short of Avatar‘s record at around $2.5 billion. I hope to be proved wrong though and it becomes the biggest movie ever.”