With the Lights Out...
It's Less Dangerous.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens has smashed the record for the biggest box office debut weekend globally with tickets sales of $529m (£355m). The previous record, $525m, was set by Jurassic World in June.
The seventh installment of the nearly 40-year-old space saga also opened with a record-breaking $248m in the US and Canada.Here We Are Now...
Analysts say the space saga could become the biggest-selling movie of all time.Entertain Us.
This is despite the fact that Jurassic World's had the advantage of opening in China on the same weekend it opened everywhere else. The Force Awakens, in contrast, will not debut in the world's second biggest cinema-going territory until 9 January.
The latest film returns to "a galaxy far, far away" some 30 years on from the action of 1983's Return of the Jedi. It sees original trilogy stars Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher reprise their Han Solo and Princess Leia roles alongside younger franchise newcomers.
"Our sole focus has been creating a film that delivers that one-of-a-kind Star Wars experience, and director JJ Abrams, Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy and the Lucasfilm team have outdone themselves," Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn said in a statement.-------------------
ADDED: More big numbers, if that's your thing...
We all knew legendary actors Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford would be paid a bit more than newcomers Daisy Ridley and John Boyega for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but now we know by just how much.
According to the Mail on Sunday, Ford has reportedly been paid £16.7 million for reprising the role of Han Solo and will also get 0.5 per cent of the film’s gross earnings, estimated to be £1.3 billion. He’s also already been handed £1 million in compensation after breaking his leg during shooting at Pinewood studios.
That means, in total, the Indiana Jones actor could earn £23 million, 76 times what British newcomer Daisy Ridley and John Boyega will take from the film.
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A Disney source told the Sunday paper: “Harrison is the key to making this movie work. He’s the link between the old generation and the new. Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher were good to get, but the film could have lived without them. You couldn’t make it without Harrison Ford.”
Of course, it should also be noted that for the original 1977 Star Wars film, Ford was only paid £7,000 as he was a relatively unknown at the time.------------------------------
“Daisy’s a virtual unknown, and this is a career-making role, so she’d probably have been willing to take it for free and Disney knew it,” the insider continued. “She has been signed to a multi-picture deal with pre-set bumps in her salary that rise substantially with each movie. That doesn’t guarantee she’ll be in subsequent films, but it gives the studio peace of mind to know she’s contractually obliged if they want her again.”
It was also revealed that director JJ Abrams was paid £3.3 million to direct the film and will take a two per cent share of the film’s gross, while Carrie Fisher -- reprising her role as General Leia -- was paid £1 million. The actress has previously signed away her likeness to the character, meaning she will make no money on merchandise.
ADDED: Another entertainment numbers story, in the same vein...
Occasionally there is a marriage of artist and medium so perfect it trumps everything that came before... no one has mastered Snapchat -- the outlet where publicly posted pictures and videos live for 24 hours, then disappear -- like DJ Khaled, who has become a social media celebrity in a way that outpaces his musical fame.Here we are now...
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His effectiveness and addictiveness in the medium have elevated him from carnival barker to transcendent public figure. It’s not clear how many followers DJ Khaled has, but a screen grab of his Snapchat data he posted suggests that about two million people are seeing each post.
In his public Snapchat stories, which span the full arc of his day in and around his Miami home, DJ Khaled shows an innate understanding of narrative, and a grasp of how to brand an idea instantly: say, watering his plants, which he calls his “angels”; greeting the lion statue in his garden, shouting “Lion!”; or running the camera over the length of his body and landing on a fresh pair of sneakers, punctuating the moment with “Another one!”Entertain us!
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Each day, he invites viewers to “walk with me on the pathway to more success” as he films his feet. (You’ll never be as familiar with a star’s feet as with his.)
Other hip-hop artists tend to use Snapchat as a more blatantly promotional tool, or at least aren’t as comfortable spotlighting their moment-to-moment activities. But DJ Khaled has no such inhibitions:
(With the evanescence built into Snapchat, it can sometimes be difficult, the morning after, to distinguish real life from fever dream, but he did indeed say that.)
- He films himself, nimbly, while in the shower.
- He shoots himself slathering his body with cocoa butter.
- He posts clips of his pedicures and massages. ...
- He once referred to his genitalia as “the theory.”
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