‘Star Wars’ fans crash US ticket sale sites

The Force clearly wasn’t with cinema owners on Monday night.

Consumers seeking to buy advance tickets to Star Wars: The Force Awakens found themselves out of luck when several theatre websites crashed, apparently overwhelmed by the large volume of orders.

Fandango, a leading online ticket provider, and AMC Theatres, the nation’s second-largest theatre chain, were among those affected. Austin, Texas-based Alamo Drafthouse and Los Angeles-based Arclight Cinemas also had difficulties with their websites.

Angry patrons took to Twitter to vent their frustrations.

“It’s as if millions of voices suddenly cried out, and were suddenly silenced by the Arclight Cinemas site refusing to load,” one customer complained.

“We greatly apologise for the inconvenience, but we are working quickly to get the website back up ASAP,” Arclight said in a statement Monday night.

Representatives of AMC and Alamo declined to comment.

Theatre chains in the United Kingdom experienced similar problems with early ticket sales.

The ticketing problems are an embarrassment for chains that are hoping to cash in on the biggest movie of the year, one that could help the industry set a new box-office record.

Theatres frequently sell tickets before the opening of highly anticipated movies. Advance ticket sales for the upcoming Star Wars film, however, are expected to surpass the previous record set in 2012 with The Hunger Games.

The movie, from Disney-owned Lucasfilm, opens in theatres in the UAE on December 17. The seventh instalment in the Star Wars franchise is directed by J.J. Abrams.