There won’t be an extended cut for ‘The Force Awakens’ Blu-ray edition

If you were thinking scoring the Blu-ray version of Star Wars: The Force Awakens will score you extra footage you didn’t see in the cinema, well you thought wrong. The film’s director J.J. Abrams has said there will be extras in the DVD/Blu-ray release but these will come in the form of deleted scenes from the movie. He hasn’t specified though how many scenes or how long these scenes will run.  Abrams said during the recent panel that the first cut of The Force Awakens clocked in at two hours and 50 minutes, which is 35 minutes longer than what we saw at the cinemas. Unfortunately, we don’t know yet when the DVD/Blu-ray editions of the new Star Wars trilogy will come out.

Source: EW + SlashGear

‘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

Spotify subscribers can now stream the "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" OST

John Williams' iconic and masterful score for all the Star Wars movies has been one of the defining features of this beloved movie franchise and this continues for Episode VII. Just in time for the global opening of the film, Spotify is making available the entire soundtrack to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It's a nice, spoiler free way to ruminate on the movie before or after seeing it and Williams delivers another dramatic and heroic score that's intrinsic to the movie's character.

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