Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker trailer tops The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi milestone

It looks like Star Wars remains as popular as ever, as the trailer for The Rise of Skywalker has broken a massive record for the franchise.

The teaser clip for Episode 9, which first dropped at Star Wars Celebration two weeks ago, clocked up 111 million views within 24 hours of its launch.

According to Deadline, that's 20 million more than The Last Jedi and more than double The Force Awakens' achievements in their first days online.

Of course, it pales in comparison to similar achievements by fellow Disney movies such as Avengers: Endgame and The Lion King, which took in 298m and 224.6m views respectively in their first 24 hours.

However, The Rise of Skywalker's trailer did actually drop live at the event, so many were tuning in at the time, whereas the other movies dropped their trailers out of the blue.

One of the big talking points from the trailer was the confirmation that Emperor Palpatine will be back, after his infamous cackle was heard at the end.

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However, star Ian McDiarmid admitted that the laugh we hear wasn't actually a new one, the actor saying: "They found it somewhere, probably from one of the old movies or in a digital vault, or maybe George [Lucas]'s iPhone, I don't know."

The movie's creators also revealed recently that they had always planned to bring back the notorious villain.

"This has been in the blueprint for a long time," producer Kathleen Kennedy said. "Yeah, we had not landed on exactly how we might do that, but yes, it's always [been in the works]."

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker will be released on Thursday, December 19 in the UK and Friday, December 20 in the US.

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Sam Warner

Sam is a freelance reporter and sub-editor who has a particular interest in movies, TV and music. After completing a journalism Masters at City University, London, Sam joined Digital Spy as a reporter, and has also freelanced for publications such as NME and Screen International.  Sam, who also has a degree in Film, can wax lyrical about everything from Lord of the Rings to Love Is Blind, and is equally in his element crossing every 't' and dotting every 'i' as a sub-editor.