How you can see the first trailer for the new 'Star Wars'
The longest lines outside theaters this Thanksgiving weekend may be for the new “Star Wars” trailer.
Director J.J. Abrams on Monday confirmed the release plans on Twitter. Thirty theaters across North America will show an 88-second trailer for Disney's “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” starting Friday morning. The trailer will be available globally in December, according to starwars.com.
Only one theater in Illinois — the Regal City North Stadium 14, 2600 N. Western Ave., Chicago — will carry the trailer this weekend.
The anticipation around the trailer for the seventh episode of the “Star Wars” saga is the latest drip feeding of information about the 2015 release, and it's timed to exploit the Thursday-to-Sunday Thanksgiving break, a big weekend for films. In 1998, some movie fans bought tickets to the Brad Pitt weepie “Meet Joe Black” just to see the first trailer for “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace.”
“Trailers have always had this kind of hold on the fans,” said Robert Marich, who recounts the Pitt episode in his book “Marketing to Moviegoers.” “The fans, the geeks, the aficionados, they are trendsetters, they're plugged in online. They show up for trailers.”
Until Disney and exhibitors say more, “Star Wars” fans will have to guess which current films the trailer will be running with. Disney's latest animated feature, “Big Hero 6,” is still in theaters.
The efforts to build excitement around the new release with teasers tap into the growing importance of previews to a fanboy audience. A trailer for “The Avengers: Age of Ultron” was recently leaked and has been seen almost 60 million times on YouTube.
Universal Pictures released an online teaser for next year's “Jurassic World” on Nov. 23 and planned to unveil a longer online trailer on Thanksgiving Day, according to an official Twitter feed for the film.
In an age of social media, trailers are often released online. The decision to unveil the “Star Wars” clip in theaters highlights the importance Disney places on the film.
The studio ranks second this year in domestic box-office receipts behind 21st Century Fox Inc., with $1.46 billion in ticket sales, according to Box Office Mojo. Its biggest domestic films this year have been “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” both from Marvel.
“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” opens in theaters Dec. 18, 2015.