Crowd pitches fit when projector stops at ‘Star Wars’ screening

“Now that we watched the movie, we know it wasn’t the ending”, Melendez said, as quoted by CNN. The new Star Wars film also broke the $91.1 million opening day record previously set by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows: Part 2 in 2011. The first Star Wars film in a decade reunited original cast members Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill, who are joined by newbies Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Adam Driver, Lupita Nyong’o, Domhnall Gleeson and Gwendoline Christie.

A student of the University of California, Los Angeles, Erik Melendez caught the action on his phone, showing hundreds of fans standing up and shouting “NO, NO!” at the projectionist. “The movie was spoiled and everyone in the theater went insane”.

In several videos posted on Friday, you can see a theater full of fans at the ArcLight losing their minds when the projector breaks mid-screening.

It then restarted, but played 15 or 20 minutes ahead of where the film left off.

Another longer clip was posted to YouTube. As compensation for the ruined movie experience, the theater owner gave the moviegoers a refund for the tickets as well as a voucher for a free movie in the future.

The movie is packing theaters across the nation and is heading toward a record-breaking weekend take of $220 million.