This weekend, the most anticipated movie of… well, ever… opens wide around the country.  While most fans only care whether or not it’s a quality installment of the saga (i.e. more like the originals than the prequels), Disney and the major theater chains are hoping to see strong box-office results.  With great reviews and unparalleled hype, the box-office question is now:

Will STAR WARS set a new record? 

For reference, no film released in December has ever broken the $100 M mark for opening weekend in the USA.  As another reference, the best opening weekend ever was Jurassic World (a summer release), at $208M.   So, what will The Force Awakens do?

You could look to the EXPERTS for answers.  According to Deadline, the tracking reports predict Box Office between $185M and $210M for Star Wars this weekend.  According to Forbes Magazine, which has a less optimistic view, Star Wars will be on the low end of this scale, reporting it will be an uphill battle for Star Wars to even break the $208M record.  The industry consensus… $197M. 

Or, you can look to FANS for answers. A new technology called SWARM INTELLIGENCE lets members of the public pool their insights and express a collective opinion in real-time.  Using a swarming platform called UNU, we asked 42 people to predict the opening weekend results as a unified swarm. Here is a replay of what the swarm predicted:

Wow… the swarm of fans predicted $324M.  That’s a highly optimistic number, possibly influenced more by the emotion of enthusiastic fans than by the dynamics of ticket sales.  That said, swarms have shown remarkable intuition in the past.

So, will the opening weekend BOX OFFICE be closer to $197M (the average of experts) or $324M (a swarm of fans)?  I’ve never bet against a swarm before, so I’m going to put my prediction out there – Star Wars is going to blow away the industry expectations! 

Want to be part of a swarm?  Now you can – swarms are forming to explore all kinds topics of all kinds, from movies and comics, to sports and politics. If you’d like to be a BETA TESTER for the folks at UNU, just CLICK HERE.