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Even though "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" doesn’t open in the U.S. and much of the world until December, fans could start buying tickets this week — and they did, in droves.
Fandango announced that its web traffic surged to seven times normal peak levels while the upcoming blockbuster sold eight times as many tickets as the company's previous first-day pre-sales record holder.
And while it seems like "The Force Awakens" is off to a killer start in the States, one place where Disney also is hoping to make a huge splash is China — the second biggest movie market in the world.
But the marketing approach there is complicated, because the original three "Star Wars" films did not play in Chinese theaters when they were made.
We spoke with Nancy Tartaglione, the International Editor at Deadline, and she’s been writing about how Disney is bringing Chinese audiences up to speed with "Star Wars."
China has a bit of a complicated history with "Star Wars." Can you talk a bit about that?
One thing that's important to remember is while "Star Wars" is one of the most well-known global franchises, and has been since 1977, it hasn't had the same notoriety in China as it has in other markets, certainly in other Asian markets.
Through all the first six movies, it's done fantastically well in Japan, but it hasn't really resonated in China. In fact, the first three films weren't even theatrically released to begin with.
Now, China was a vastly different market back in those days, but over the last several months you've seen Disney slowly stoking the fires in order to increase awareness of the films. I'd say that really started in June at the Shanghai Film Festival, where the first six movies were all screened.
Disney also made a deal with online streaming giant Tencent to make the six films available via VoD. And then, just yesterday, there was this massive event at the Great Wall [near Beijing], which I think just looks fantastic when you look at the photos.
They used the Great Wall like a screen for a projection of the trailer, is that right?
Yes. There were several hundred fans there and, at the end, all of a sudden there were 500 Stormtroopers standing on the Wall. And there were these massive beacons shining the Chinese characters for "The Force Awakens" through this particular portion of the Great Wall.
Who were the people who attended this screening?
Fans. There are people that certainly do know what the movie is. I'm not trying to make it sound like nobody in China's ever heard of "Star Wars" [laughs]. The Chinese are very Internet-savvy, they've had exposure to the films in the past several months, and we know that China also has quite an issue with piracy, so they've probably seen these movies before.
And one would expect that the public there is getting wind of what's happening on the rest of the world. When you have a trailer release like you did on Monday during Monday Night Football, the resonates around the world.