Force Awakens Bits: Unused Concept Art, Record Opening Box Office, Harrison Ford On Spoilers, False Rumors

The Force has awakened, have you felt it? I'm sure many of you have already seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens last night or early this morning, with some of you holding desperately to tickets for screenings this weekend. Good for you. I have now seen the film two times and can tell you its delightfully rewatchable. Also I found the IMAX 3D presentation to be better than normal 2D (there are actually some great moments that take advantage of the 3D). But lets get into todays news and tidbits, which includes the following:

All that and more, after the jump.

Arclight Theatres photo by Jen

Star Wars: The Force Awakens earned a projected $57 million in Thursday night showings in North America alone, destroying the previous record of $43.5 million set in 2011 by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. Some box office analysts are saying it could even go higher than that. The film is playing around the clock in a majority of its record 4,134 theaters, and is very likely going to beat the domestic weekend record of $208.8 million set earlier this year by Jurassic World.

In an interview with Buzzfeed, Harrison Ford made a plea to people to not spoil Star Wars: The Force Awakens (of course, someone should have told Mr. Solo this during the Star Wars Twitter Q&A). Here is what Ford said:

Stop that. Don't do that. Please don't do that. Don't do that, because people are paying to get in and they should experience the movie. Talk about it later. Please. Don't tell people what happens before they go into the theatre. You paid for it. So let them pay for it. And let them enjoy the full satisfaction in having earned the experience, because you want your audience to have an experience, not have something served to them. There's a menu, you choose what you want to take from it. But you don't want to spoil it.

ScreenCrush has a great roundup of 50 rumors that were reported for Star Wars: The Force Awakens that turned out to be false. I'm happy to report that /Film did not "break" any of these 50 false rumors. But I also must add that while many of these were completely false, at least a handful of these reports were at one time true, but the project evolved at many stages during production even as late as the last few weeks of editing.

GadgetLove decided to morph the old Stormtrooper helmet with the new First Order stormtrooper helmer to see what it looked like. The result, above, is very cool. They also note, the "size difference of the two designs makes it look as if they are breathing in and out while evolving."

IO9 has a preview of Abrams' Books' The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I have the book in hand and its pretty awesome, buy it here.

Yesterday we learned that the new Star Wars film would screen for astronauts in space, and now Variety reports that Force Awakens is scheduled to screen at the White House in Washington DC. The film will be screened on Friday for members of Gold Star families, an organization of family members who lost relatives in military combat. First lady Michelle Obama will greet the families, although its not clear if she will screen the film with them.

Speaking with Uproxx, Adam Driver (who plays Kylo Ren in the film), said that his character's mask made it very difficult to perform his scenes. He said:

To this day, I still don't know who's in the movie because I haven't seen anybody.

QZ.com has a roundup of photos that people have posted on social media showing what their Star Wars: The Force Awakens tickets look like from around the world.