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In case you missed it: “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” was finally released yesterday.
What felt like years amount of promotion (OK, just a few months) coupled with fans’ anticipation, finally culminated with a worldwide event across thousands of theaters.
Excitement online has been palpable since October, when the huge amount of traffic caused ticket pre-sales caused Fandango.com and MovieTickets.com to crash. The trailer racked up 7.5 million in less than 12 hours on Facebook.
The buzz, not surprisingly, translated into record-breaking ticket sales, with Disney expected to rake in $57 million from Thursday shows alone, reports Deadline, breaking the previous record-holder “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows” by more than $10 million.
Let’s look at some other numbers:
84 percent. Fans who worried that the franchise, directed by J.J. Abrams for the first time, wouldn’t live up to their expectations were proven wrong. The sentiment online is overwhelmingly positive — 84 percent to be exact, as tracked by Amobee Brand Intelligence.
1,267,377. That’s how many tweets mentioned Star Wars — just yesterday — Amobee Brand Intelligence says.
25 percent. Online, a quarter of the time searched for the word “spoiler” between Nov. 18 and Dec. 18 was relating to the movie, according to Amobee Brand Intelligence, as fans asked others not to ruin the ending.
45 percent. Darth Vader remains the king of the franchise, Google Trends says, with less than half of the searches for Stars War relating to him. Luke Skywalker was in second place with 18 percent and Princess Leia came in at 14 percent.
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