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''Star Wars'' fans spend $115 million on Tuesday | 93026__starwars_l
THREE KINGS The ''Star Wars'' trilogy (starring Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford) rakes it in
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Is the whole planet under the sway of a Jedi mind trick? On Tuesday, all over the world, people plunked down $115 million for new Star Wars titles, according to 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. That may sound like a big first-day sales figure, though it's hard to tell, since it includes spending worldwide on not just the new DVD set of the original trilogy but also on the new ''Star Wars Battlefront'' videogame. Still, Variety estimates that 90 percent of that figure was spent in the U.S. It may not represent a record number of copies -- at an estimated average purchase price of $40 to $45, the DVD is three times as costly as such recent bestselling DVDs as The Passion of the Christ -- but if the discs sell an estimated 8 million copies (as projected by trade publication DVD Exclusive), they'd gross $350 million, enough to make the boxed set one of the year's top home video releases and one of the top 15 releases of all time. Those are some hefty returns for the Jedi.


Posted Sep 23, 2004 | Order Article Reprints