Many industry insiders have been debating back and forth whether or not "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" has a realistic shot at taking down James Cameron's "Avatar" ($2.7 Billion) as the highest grossing film of all time. If early trends are any indication, "The Force Awakens" is going to lay waste to the box office upon its official release.
Zac Efron's summer release "We Are Your Friends" totaled a laughable $3.59 million at the box office. "Jem and the Holograms" was pulled from theaters after just two weeks thanks to its disastrous $2.25 million. But "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," which still won't hit theaters for another month, has racked up a whopping $50 million in advanced ticket sales, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Disney and Lucasfilm made presale tickets available on Oct. 19, the same day they released the official trailer. Instantly, movie ticketing sites such as AMC, MovieTickets.com and Fandango began to crash due the rapid flurry of activity.
"Last night, we had the single biggest simultaneous surge for movie tickets our industry has ever season," Tim League, CEO of Alamo Drafthouse theaters, told Entertainment Weekly last month.
Fandango, the country's largest online ticket distributor, confirmed that "The Force Awakens" is shattering sales records left and right.
"We have already sold eight times as many tickets as we did on the first day of sales for the previous record holder," the company said shortly after "Star Wars" tickets became available. MovieTickets.com said that "The Force Awakens" sales generated the highest ever traffic numbers for its website, and AMC Theaters reported that the film broke its single-day advance sales record by more than tenfold.
Variety reports that "The Force Awakens" will appear on roughly 4,000 screens when it hits theaters on Dec. 18. Watch your back, Cameron. The Force is coming for you.
