Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Scores Second-Best First-Day Pre-Sales on Atom Tickets

As if Disney wasn't already having its best year on record at the box office, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is already on its way to becoming a record-setting movie. Now over 24 hours after tickets for the ninth film in Lucasfilm's Skywalker Saga initially went on sale, Atom Tickets has announced the movie has had the second-best first day for any movie selling its tickets on the platform. While exact numbers weren't provided in a release by Atom, the ticket-selling service did point out The Rise of Skywalker ended up selling 2.5 times more tickets than its predecessor Star Wars: The Last Jedi did in 2017.

The only movie to sell better on its first day on the platform is Avengers: Endgame, the highest-grossing movie to ever hit theatres. Rounding out the top five first-day ticket sellers include Aquaman, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and Avengers: Infinity War.

The movie features the return of J.J. Abrams to the franchise, after the filmmaker last directed The Force Awakens, the highest-grossing film of the franchise. According to Abrams, the scariest part of returning is having to deal with the pressures of making the best possible ending for one of Hollywood's most storied franchises.

"Endings are the thing that scare me the most," Abrams told Entertainment Weekly. "This is about bringing this thing to a close in a way that is emotional and meaningful and also satisfying in terms of actually answering [as many] questions as possible," he explained. "So if years from now, someone's watching these movies, all nine of them, they're watching a story that is as cohesive as possible."

In a separate interview, Rise of Skywalker scribe Chris Terrio revealed the movie has to deal heavily with answering the question of Rey and her upbringing.

"How can Rey become the spiritual heir to the Jedi? We kept coming back to 'Who is Rey?', and how can we give the most satisfying answer to that not only factually – because obviously people are interested in whether there's more to be learned of Rey's story – but more importantly who is she as a character? How will she find the courage and will and inner strength and power to carry on what she's inherited?"

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker hits theaters December 20th.

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