Move over, Moana. There’s a new hot ticket in town.
Despite Disney’s latest animated tale scoring an estimated $81 million (Dh297.4 million) over the five-day Thanksgiving weekend in the US, it was an upcoming Disney release that had the internet abuzz on Monday morning.
Ticket sales for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story began at 9pm Pacific time on Sunday (9am on Monday in the UAE), and fans hoping to score seats online to the first film in the Star Wars Anthology series were faced with extended wait times as vendors grappled with increased demand.
Though there was some Twitter buzz that popular online ticket outlet Fandango crashed during the process, the retailer opted instead for a queue system to stem the user surge.
In a statement released to Los Angeles Times, the company said, “Last night, Fandango saw extraordinary demand for tickets to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Within minutes of going on sale, we sold hundreds of thousands of tickets.
“Similar to ticketing for a highly popular concert event, a ‘waiting room’ in the checkout process was established to accommodate customers as quickly as possible,” the statement added. “We were able to continuously serve a record number of customers throughout the night, despite some intermittent slowdowns — and in order to meet the incredible consumer demand, our exhibition partners continue to add new showtimes for opening weekend.”
To celebrate the start of ticket sales, the film released a new TV spot titled Breath.
The 30-second look at the film is not only underscored by the sounds of what are assumed to be Darth Vader’s respirator but it also contains a shot of the Death Star featuring someone who looks an awful lot like Grand Moff Tarkin in the foreground.
Starring Felicity Jones, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story opens globally on December 16. But UAE fans will get the chance to see it first when it close the Dubai International Film Festival on December 14.
