‘That’s impossible’: One Star Wars panel generates 1.6 billion impressions
It may be months away from release but excitement for the latest Star Wars movie The Force Awakens is already translating into noticeable business highlights with one piece of promotional content generating over one billion impressions.
Disney’s chief operating officer Tom Staggs said coverage of the film’s event at last month’s Comic-Con in San Diego had a noticeable impact on its ongoing efforts to capitalise on the increasing popularity of the franchise online.
“To give a sense of excitement for this film, a single Star Wars panel at Comic-Con this year drove 1.6bn social and editorial impressions,” he told analysts on a conference call yesterday evening (5 August). “Of course Star Wars is already a strong contributor among our broad array of powerful franchises for our Consumer Products business where profits were up substantially in the quarter led by the collective strength of Frozen, Avengers and Star Wars.”
The new film is expected to smash records when it launches in December. Some analysts predict it could come second only to James Cameron’s Avatar in terms of box office numbers as a result of capitalising on the growing popularity of 3D and IMAX screens that command higher ticket fees than normal screens.
The scale of the opportunity for Disney is reflected in its efforts to ensure a steady flow of coverage around the franchise year-round, spanning partnerships with Adidas and Japan’s All Nippon Airways to an upcoming game produced by Electronic Arts.
Despite excitement from both fans and analysts over how big the film could be, Disney’s chief executive called for a more pragmatic approach to the lofty expectations and refused to share the company’s own expectations for the release.
“So while the enthusiasm is I think rather apparent we just want to be careful that the world doesn’t get ahead of us too much in terms of the estimates and we've seen them as well,” he added. “We are making at this point no estimates whatsoever in terms of what we believe the film will do. We know we have probably the most viable film franchise that ever existed.”
The commercial impact of the Star Wars hype machine proved a bright spot in a quarter that saw it fail to live up to the revenue expectations of analysts for the first time in 32 months. Revenue in its third quarter rose 5 per cent year-on-year to $13.1bn though analysts had predicted $13.22bn. The growth was slowed by ongoing declines across the company’s TV business, while its consumer products division continued to grow off the back of its rich line-up of brands.
The company’s movie business Walt Disney Studios continued to power its fortunes. Disney hailed the box office success of The Avengers: The Age of Ultron blockbuster with total operating income for the business at $472m, a 15 per cent increase.