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All opening dates correct at time of going to press.
PLAYING THE FORCE FIELD
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ot for a very long time - not, perhaps, since Jaws changed US and international release patterns forever in 1976 - has there been an opening quite like May’s launch of Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace.
When queues formed round the block throughout the night for the July opening of Independence Day a couple of years ago, it made non-entertainment news programmes around the world. For Star Wars, the fans were queuing a month before the opening date, camping out along Hollywood Boulevard in cheerful defiance of those suggesting they get a life. It could, of course, turn out to be a disappointment. After all, Godzilla
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was expected to stomp its way into the record books this time last year and didn’t really do so.
But Godzilla didn’t have the advantage of being the sequel to a series of films that dominated the childhood of a generation, not just in moving-picture form - first in the theatres, then on TV and finally, when the medium had matured, on video - but also in the toy-stores. The Millennium Falcon was the dream vehicle of a billion adolescents who are now right in the middle of the moviegoing demographic.
Under those circumstances, you’d have to be brave - or foolish - to predict anything other than a record opening weekend by a bid to outsteam Titanic.
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