On Monday, Oct. 21, tickets for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker were supposed to become available following the halftime of ESPN’s Monday Night Football game between the New England Patriots and New York Jets, after Disney dropped the final trailer for the film. However, instead Disney went live a few hours early, taking fans by surprise, as the pre-sale was supposed to begin with the launch of the trailer.

The run on Star Wars: Force Awakens tickets back in 2015 caused advance ticket sales sites to crash, which occurred recently back in April with the record first day presales for Avengers: Endgame. 

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Observers were not expecting Skywalker pre-sales to best those of Endgame. Endgame in the days prior to its April 26 opening had amassed an estimated $120 million in pre-sales before an image of the film even flickered on screen, a figure that outstripped that of Star Wars: Force Awakens’ pre-sales of $100 million (opening weekend $247.9M). Off Endgame‘s top pre-sale numbers, many anticipated a $300 million all-time record opening for Endgame and that’s exactly what happened with $357.1 million in U.S./Canada.

However, Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker ticket pre-sales went live on Monday night, and within the first hour, the 9th franchise installment had already set a new record for ticket pre-sales. Atom Tickets reports that the Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker ticket pre-sales set a new first-hour record for the ticket-buying service, out-selling Avengers: Endgame by a staggering 45%.

This bodes well for the box office performance of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, as Endgame would go on to rake in $2.79 billion globally, dethroning Avatar as the highest-grossing film of all time.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker opens in theaters on December 20, 2019. 

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