Advanced Television

Research: Star Wars IX generating high social media chatter

December 17, 2019

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker will be in cinemas later week, and with legions of fans talking about the film on Twitter and Instagram, social analytics company ListenFirst analysed the social media interest around Star Wars and found that The Rise Of Skywalker is generating the most social media conversation for an upcoming Star Wars movie since The Force Awakens in 2015.


Looking two weeks before the last 5 Star Wars movies were released (meaning days 44 through 14 before the release date), it appears that Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker is tracking as the second most anticipated Star Wars movie on social media. Star Wars: The Force Awakens which featured Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford returning to the franchise for the first time in decades generated an Interest Score of 3,933,766 between November 5th to December 4th 2015. Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker was the second most anticipated on social media, receiving an Interest Score of 1,959,689 between November 7th to December 6th 2019 while Rogue One: A Star Wars Story received an Interest Score of 1,766,942 between November 2nd to December 1st 2017.

– Between November 1st to December 5th 2019, the top performing social media post by Star Wars wasn’t actually about the upcoming movie, it was aboutDisney+ series The Mandalorian. An Instagram Gallery showing ‘The Child’ (aka Baby Yoda) generated 748,622 Content Responses. In comparison, the top performing Star Wars social media post talking about Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was an Instagram image sharing a new movie poster, which received 604,903 content responses.

– On the main Star Wars social media accounts between November 1st to December 5th 2019 there were 194 posts promoting Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker that generated on average 52,154 content responses while those same Star Wars social media accounts posted about The Mandalorian in total 65 times receiving on average 103,348 content responses. The Mandalorian which is in-season generated more engagement because the audience is watching it and has more to talk about, but it is noteworthy that The Rise Of Skywalker is being posted about so much more often. While The Mandalorian is the flagship programme for Disney+; promoting The Rise Of Skywalker is still being treated as the top Star Wars related priority on social media.

– During November 2019, there were 1,613,995 Tweets mentioning Yoda and 424,918 Tweets mentioning Skywalker.


Tracy David, Chief Marketing Officer at ListenFirst, commented: “While it was initially unclear if the proximity of The Mandalorian to the release The Rise Of Skywalker would hurt or help the film’s prospects, social media engagement two weeks before a film’s release is traditionally a strong indication of box office performance and social media interest in Skywalker is high. For instance, even as The Mandalorian‘s Baby Yoda has become a beloved social media meme, The Rise Of Skywalker is generating the most social media conversation for an upcoming Star Wars movie since The Force Awakens in 2015. Just like with the interlocking Marvel movies, where one project helps build anticipation for the next one, the success of The Mandalorian is keeping Star Wars even more top-of-mind on social media ahead of the film’s opening weekend.”

 

 

Categories: Articles, Consumer Behaviour, Research, Social Media