'Rogue One' is Hottest Ticket in Town

Advance tickets for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story went on sale in the United States on Monday, and they proved to be very hot tickets indeed. While reports that eager buyers crashed Fandago's web site in a rush to get tickets were somewhat exaggerated, there's still no doubt that presales for the film are going to be very strong.

In reality, some users had to wait a little while before their orders for tickets were completed, but Fandango's site never really went down. The site does report, however, that it sold "hundreds of thousands" of tickets in just the first few minutes of their availability.

Something similar happened last year when tickets for Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens went on sale, and that movie went on to sell $100 million in tickets before the film even opened. Rogue One is extremely unlikely to sell that well--the film's total opening-weekend gross is expected to be between $100 and $140 million--but Disney is reportedly very pleased by the early interest in tickets.

Rogue One is scheduled to open on December 16, and it will likely turn in the biggest opening weekend of the year. It won't have time, though, to become the highest-grossing film of 2016 before the end of the year.