After tickets went on sale online for “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” Sunday night, people started reporting that Fandango was so overwhelmed that it crashed.
Not true, TheWrap has learned. In fact, there were so many requests for tickets that Fandango experienced its biggest first day of sales this year, and set up a kind of online waiting room to process all the orders.
While Fandango didn’t crash, it did suffer intermittent slowdowns, just like other online ticketing sites did. Fandango sold hundreds of thousands of tickets within minutes of their going on sale.
“Similar to ticketing for a highly popular concert event, a ‘waiting room’ in the checkout process was established to accommodate customers as quickly as possible,” a Fandango statement said. “We were able to continuously serve a record number of customers throughout the night, despite some intermittent slowdowns — and in order to meet the incredible consumer demand, our exhibition partners continue to add new showtimes for opening weekend.”
Likewise, MovieTickets.com also reported its biggest first day pre-sales of the year with “Rogue One.” The company is also reporting that it did not experience any outages.
Through day one of advance ticket sales on MovieTickets.com, the film performed at 90 percent of day-one pre-sales when compared with last year’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” Pre-sales for “Rogue One” are currently still trending at No. 1 on the site.
The upcoming “Star Wars” film, directed by Gareth Edwards (“Godzilla”), stars Felicity Jones as rebellion leader Jyn Erso. It takes place between the prequel and original trilogies and depicts Erso’s efforts to steal the plans for the Death Star, the ultimate weapon of the Galactic Empire, which has terrorized children everywhere since the first “Star Wars” in 1977.
Among Erso’s allies are Rebel intel officer Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), Force warrior Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen), and Clone War veteran Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker). Mads Mikkelsen, who also played the villain in Disney-Marvel’s “Doctor Strange,” plays Galen Erso, Jyn’s father.
The film’s final trailer offers the deepest look at the “Star Wars” spinoff yet, and its international trailer provides a longer peek at Darth Vader.
“Rogue One” enters theaters on Dec. 16.