Chapter 935: One Billion in Seven Days

As the new week began, Star Wars: The Force Awakens started its weekday run, and North America ushered in Christmas week.

It was no exaggeration to say that after its North American opening weekend, Star Wars: The Force Awakens only gained momentum. It shattered all sorts of box office records, raking in money with zero resistance. The nationwide single-day Monday box office record, which had been gathering dust for twelve years, was rewritten once again.

With 65.24 million dollars, Star Wars: The Force Awakens smashed the previous highest Monday box office record of 45.67 million dollars set by The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2003, raising the bar by a massive margin.

In just four days, the film's North American box office broke the 400 million dollar mark, setting the record for the fastest film to cross 400 million dollars in North American cinematic history.

Meanwhile, Duke, Warner Brothers, and Lucasfilm didn't relax their grip on Star Wars: The Force Awakens in the slightest. All sorts of related events and hype emerged in an endless stream.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens showed no signs of stopping its record-breaking pace, exhilarating both new and old fans. But how could the astronauts on the International Space Station, stationed thousands of miles away from a movie theater, manage to watch the film? There was no need to worry.

This very Tuesday, a three-person team of astronauts riding the Soyuz Rocket successfully docked with the International Space Station. Not only did their mission go smoothly, but a surprise was waiting for them in space—Star Wars: The Force Awakens would be screened on the space station, allowing the astronauts to enjoy a cinematic Christmas feast during their off-hours.

"Watching Star Wars in space is absolutely an unparalleled experience. This immersive feeling is something IMAX simply cannot compare to."

The astronauts in space could hardly conceal their excitement. The America National Aeronautics and Space Administration also published the messages transmitted by these astronauts on their official Instant Sharing account.

On Tuesday, Star Wars: The Force Awakens took in another 53.41 million dollars, effortlessly setting a new Tuesday box office record in North American cinematic history.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens had already broken every record it possibly could.

On Wednesday, the well-known North American online ticketing website Fandango released its list of the top ten films with the highest online ticket sales for 2014. Star Wars: The Force Awakens boldly claimed the championship. Over sixty percent of the users on the website purchased tickets for the film, setting multiple new records.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens had launched its presale mode two months before its release. On its first day of presales, the ticket volume for Star Wars: The Force Awakens on Fandango shattered the website's historical presale record, reaching three times that of the previous record holder, The Avengers.

The MovieTicket website revealed that the film's presale box office set a new 15-year high. It was 13 times the presale box office of Star Wars Prequel 3: Revenge of the Sith over the same timeframe. The sales volume for IMAX theater chains was also astonishing; the presale box office generated by 490 IMAX screens broke 12.5 million dollars, thoroughly rewriting history. Prior to this, no single movie's single-day IMAX presale box office had ever exceeded 1 million dollars.

On this day, Star Wars: The Force Awakens collected another 42.26 million dollars from North America.

By this time, the cumulative North American box office for Star Wars: The Force Awakens reached a staggering 505.42 million dollars. It broke the 500 million dollar threshold in just six days, also shattering the record for the fastest film to cross 500 million dollars held by The Avengers.

On Thursday, analysts from Oppenheimer & Co. suggested that merchandise for Star Wars: The Force Awakens would drive the entire American toy industry and movie tie-in market into their best period in ten years. They also estimated that from early November to the end of December, the sales revenue of Star Wars Series products had already reached 2 billion dollars.

Many benefited from this industrial chain: retailers, toy manufacturers, and especially Duke and Lucasfilm.

Among the many toy manufacturers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a little-known robot toy design company named SPHERO also rode the massive ship that was Duke and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, becoming a major contributor to that 2 billion dollars in sales.

This company specialized in producing scaled-down BB-8 toys for Duke and Lucasfilm.

Duke naturally had his reasons for choosing such an obscure manufacturing company. This company called SPHERO had been dedicated to producing remote-controlled smart balls for years, making them the absolute best fit for BB-8.

SPHERO's own internally produced smart balls had been selling for four years, moving only 14 units per hour. But after the smart balls became BB-8s, they sold 4,000 units per hour. This was the power of Duke combined with Star Wars.

With Christmas approaching, BB-8 became the most popular Christmas gift. In the Christmas gift sales statistics released by multiple e-commerce websites and major shopping malls, merchandise related to BB-8 consistently ranked at the very top.

Especially on the Thursday just before Christmas, sales revenue for BB-8 toys reached over 220 million dollars in North America alone.

On that same day, the North American box office for Star Wars: The Force Awakens continued its steady decline, taking in 37.56 million dollars and bringing its cumulative North American total to 542.98 million dollars.

Over those five days, Star Wars: The Force Awakens continued to sweep through overseas film markets, its cumulative overseas box office breaking the 500 million dollar mark.

After one week in theaters, the film's combined global box office reached 1.09758 billion dollars, making it the fastest film in world cinematic history to break the one billion dollar mark.

As Star Wars: The Force Awakens approached its second weekend in North America, Warner Brothers and Lucasfilm turned up the heat on their promotional marketing. From print media to social media, a massive amount of news about the film appeared again, though this time the hype focused primarily on Duke.

Every piece of news had an expiration date, and Warner Brothers and Lucasfilm had formulated an extremely professional strategy.

Particularly in the Christmas special issue published by Time Magazine the day before Christmas, Duke stood alongside BB-8 as they shared the cover together.

"As the director of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Duke Rosenberg possesses the qualities of a god or an empire builder. He is exactly what Star Wars, a franchise that has been dormant for so long, needs: a super fan and a pop culture expert."

Opening the cover of this issue of Time Magazine revealed an even more detailed feature.

"Considering that fans have supported the Star Wars franchise for so, so long, even when the director disappointed them with a sequel shot like a disaster movie—we're talking about Attack of the Clones—why? George? Why?—they still didn't give up. So finding someone from among this crowd to direct the new film seemed incredibly fitting."

"Duke Rosenberg saw the very first Star Wars in 1977 when he was only seven years old. Because of the relationship between their two families, he frequently appeared on the sets of the two subsequent Star Wars films, deeply influenced by Star Wars culture and George Lucas."

"You could say Duke Rosenberg is God's darling, arriving in the world carrying every blessing, able to observe the birth of such a magnificent franchise on set during his youth."

"During the golden age of the Star Wars universe, cinema could open up entirely new horizons and spaces, bringing people the ecstasy of seeing spectacles on Earth or in galaxies far, far away."

"However, in this universe, special effects and anonymity became more important than story, character, directorial vision, and a touch of creative wisdom. Thus, the monotonous visuals of the Star Wars Prequel trilogy were occasionally punctuated by apocalyptic clamor, staging repetitive storylines, explosions, narrow escapes, and tortuously unsurprising rescues until the audience was lulled into numbness."

"But Duke Rosenberg, a director profoundly influenced by Star Wars and George Lucas, saved all of this. His brilliant move in Star Wars: The Force Awakens—and a very important spirit, truly—was cutting away the unnecessary chaos to return it to its roots. In the complicated universe of this film, this was no small feat."

"Just like in the real world, the star wars continue, and now the roles of the trio—Luke, Leia, and Han Solo—have been taken up by a charismatic, brilliantly talented trio carefully selected by Duke: Oscar Isaac, Daniel Wu, and Daisy Ridley. Duke has also made them look as if they possess a more multidimensional and complex humanity."

"At the same time, Duke Rosenberg established the core of the new trilogy. The new generation's Luke Skywalker is a young woman: Rey, who lives tenaciously in the desert. Played by Daisy Ridley, she possesses Luke's skill set and shares the same love for natural fabrics."

"Star Wars: The Force Awakens presents a complex future world. Duke Rosenberg has crafted this film into something exceptionally brilliant. He didn't shoot this film just for true Star Wars fans, but for everyone!"

Without a doubt, the Star Wars franchise was the strongest fan-driven movie series in history. Over the past week, almost every Star Wars fan had flooded into theaters. While this contributed massive box office numbers, it also consumed a portion of their enthusiasm.

In subsequent screenings, Star Wars: The Force Awakens had to face a new reality: the enthusiasm of Star Wars fans was steadily dropping. How high the final box office could ultimately climb would rely heavily on the number of casual moviegoers.

In North America, Star Wars had long since become a socio-cultural phenomenon, but there were always places its influence couldn't reach. Compared to North America, the overseas box office would be impacted even more by casual audiences. Warner Brothers and Lucasfilm formulated their post-release marketing strategies, and one of their key tactics was using the film's sky-high box office numbers and audience word-of-mouth to influence the choices of casual viewers.

In its first week, Star Wars: The Force Awakens had already raked in nearly 1.1 billion dollars at the global box office. Subsequent developments proved that whether it was the debate around Rey that Duke had initially guided, or the post-release promotional marketing by Warner Brothers and Lucasfilm, both generated a massive driving force.

As the curtain rose on a new weekend, Star Wars: The Force Awakens welcomed its second weekend alongside the Christmas holiday.