I mean, Meet Joe Black doesn’t have anything to do with Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.
But if you were a Star Wars fan back in the day, you’ll remember what made those two films unexpectedly linked.
Back in 1998, Meet Joe Black tickets were selling like crazy—not because fans were desperate to see the film itself, but because Star Wars fans knew it was the only way to see the very first trailer for The Phantom Menace.
People would buy tickets, sit through the trailer, and then leave the theater.
Yep, you read that right. If you missed out on that era of fandom, come on in, and I’ll walk you through exactly how it all went down.
Without further ado…
Back Then, We Didn’t Have YouTube or Anything Like It
Back in the day, catching a movie trailer wasn’t as simple as hopping onto YouTube and typing in a title.
Studios didn’t just drop trailers online for anyone to watch whenever they wanted—if you wanted that first glimpse of The Phantom Menace, you had to be there in person.
And that’s exactly what Star Wars fans did.
People bought tickets to Meet Joe Black just to see the trailer, which lasted just over two minutes. Considering tickets were around $4–5 each, that’s some serious dedication.
In 1998, sure, we had iTunes Trailers and Ain’t It Cool News to keep up with movie buzz, but no Facebook, no Twitter, and definitely no YouTube. It was like a different era entirely.
The teaser played in only 75 theaters across the U.S. and Canada, running before Meet Joe Black, The Waterboy, and The Siege.
In fact, after Meet Joe Black finished, many theaters replayed the trailer, so some fans actually snuck back in at the end of the movie just to catch that second viewing of The Phantom Menace teaser!
The Download Frenzy that Set Records for Star Wars Fans
After realizing fans were so hyped with the trailer, for the first time, StarWars.com made the trailer available for free in several formats—Real Video, QuickTime, and AVI.
And you would guess what happened after that, people went crazy to download the trailer to watch it over and over again.
Fans were so eager for a peek at the next Star Wars chapter that it quickly became one of the most downloaded trailers in history.
On March 11, 1999, a second, longer trailer went live, offering better quality and an extended look.
Apple hosted it exclusively in QuickTime format, giving the company a huge edge over competitors. In fact, that day alone, QuickTime itself saw 600,000 downloads as fans scrambled to install the software just to watch the trailer.
Within 24 hours, the trailer had over a million downloads, setting new records. By the end of the first week, downloads had climbed to 3.5 million, reaching an astounding 6.4 million within three weeks.
Even Steve Jobs acknowledged it as “the biggest Internet download event in history.” The event was so massive it led to online congestion at levels not seen since the release of the Starr Report.