New Star Wars trailer breaks viewing record set by the last Star Wars trailer

By Victor Beigelman | October 23, 2015 | 8:14pm

Aux Features Film

Monday brought about a tidal wave of Star Wars marketing and subsequent fanfare with the release of the official Force Awakens trailer and ticket pre-sales, and now Friday is here to quantify the damage. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the trailer was watched online 112 million times in 24 hours, and since 16 million viewers were tuned into the Monday Night Football telecast where it debuted, that brings the total number of first-day views to 128 million. This shatters the previous record of 88 million views in 24 hours set by the second Star Wars teaser, which soared past the 55 million views in 24 hours the first teaser pulled in. The Force Awakens is the equally casual Usain Bolt of film trailers, apparently.

Ticket sales followed a similar rabid trend, with the U.K.’s third-largest ticket operator reporting 10,000 tickets snatched up in the first 90 minutes alone. The Hollywood Reporter says 200,000 tickets ended up being sold in the first day, and several sites crashed from the high demand. All this hubbub in anticipation of the franchise’s first film since 2005 has many speculating whether it’ll surpass Avatar and Titanic to become the highest-grossing film in history. James Cameron will respond, presumably, by steering his submarine further into the ocean’s depths in search of even more devastatingly awesome inspiration for his Avatar sequels.