‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ becomes fastest film to reach $1 billion

Photo courtesy of Lucasfilm

Demonstrating how hyper speed can work in real life, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens dethrones Jurassic World as the fastest movie to hit the US$1 billion mark. They achieved this in 12 days, which is one day less than the epic dinosaur remake film. And Star Wars hit this without China’s ticket sales yet. Considered the second-largest movie market in the world, China will start showing The Force Awakens in January 9^th.

Other records the film got is it posted the biggest Christmas Day box office at $49.3 million and best second weekend earnings with $153.5 million in the U.S. and Canada, according to estimated ticket sales by Rentrak. It also garnered $133.3 million in international theatres (excluding Canada and the US). In North America, it also set opening weekend record at $238 million, also besting Jurassic World. It set international opening weekend records in Australia, New Zealand, and throughout Europe as well. The J.J. Abrams’ film also scored the biggest worldwide debut at $529 million and topped $100 million in IMAX screenings 10 days.

Source: AP The Big Story

Change your Facebook profile to show you’re a ‘Star Wars’ fan

The marketing efforts for Star Wars: The Force Awakens are relentless to say the least. With the movie coming out this week, Facebook is cashing in on the popularity by letting you change your profile picture temporarily to have either the red Dark Side cross-guard lightsaber or the blue Finn lightsaber. You can just click this link and try it out or check the link on Star Wars’ Facebook page. The direct link seems to be working from mobile for me, in case you want to check that out.

Source: Tech Crunch

The BB-8 gets gold and shiny for charity

This could be the droid you’re looking for… if you like them gold and sparkly, that is. Kay Jewelers pimped the BB-8 droid by throwing in some gold and diamonds on it. The gold droid comes in at four inches tall and weighs over 1.5 pounds. It’s covered with 18-karat yellow gold and 18 carats of diamonds that top at 860 stones. As for the price, it’s been appraised at US$135,000. The golden droid was created by Kay Jewelers as part of the Force 4 Fashion event held on Wednesday in New York City. It’s a fundraising event where fashion designers are prompted to reimagine Star Wars costumes. This luxurious BB-8 droid is up for auction with its proceeds going to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. No details on the auction are up just yet.

Source: CNET

Google brings the Force to you with Disney’s 'Star Wars' collab

Promotions for the upcoming Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens have been relentless. Google is joining in on the fun with new features that’ll be showing up in a wide variety of Google’s services. Not only do popular Google apps like Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, and Chrome get revamped, there will also be more easter eggs and other new features that will show up ahead of the movie’s premiere next month—including seeing the Millennium Falcon in all its virtual reality glory.

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