'Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens' trivia and fun facts

Billie Lourd's (Carrie Fisher's daughter) film debut.

The producers wanted to shoot the movie on real locations as often as they could instead of generating them digitally. The goal was to make the installment as similar as possible to the original trilogy of 'Star Wars'.

Elizabeth Olsen, Jennifer Lawrence and Shailene Woodley were considered for the role of Rey. Olsen refused the audition for role because she already had a contract with "Marvel Studios" for the role of Scarlet Witch in the Avengers' franchise and because the shoot dates for "The Force Awakens" overlapped with Age of Ultron. In April 2014 J.J. Abrams chose Daisy Ridley as Rey, to mimic the same type of selections made by George Lucas with little known actors for the leading roles. In 1976 Lucas chose: Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill for their respective roles of Princess Leia, Han Solo and Luke Skywalker.

Mark Hamill was the same age (63) while filming his role for this upcoming movie as Sir Alec Guinness was while filming his scenes in the original 1977 "Star Wars" film.

The teaser trailer omits "Episode VII" from the film's title, similar to the naming pattern of the original trilogy (1977-1983). However, it has been stated that "Episode VII" will be included in the opening crawl.

Hugo Weaving and Michael Fassbender were considered to play Kylo Ren, one of the villains of the movie, and that role finally went to Adam Driver.

After being released the 2nd teaser trailer reached more than 20M views on YouTube in less than 24 hours.

As of November 19, 2015, the film already made $50 million dollars just through advance ticket sales. This is double the amount that Los juegos del hambre (2012) received, which previously held the top spot for most money made from advance ticket sales.

By signing on to direct this film, J.J. Abrams becomes the first director to direct a Star Trek (2009) film and a Star Wars film.

Several scenes featuring Maz Kanata, played by Lupita Nyong'o, have been cut from the final assembly, including one she shared with Leia (Carrie Fisher).

Frank Oz and Ewan McGregor lend their voices again to Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi in one of the key scenes of ''Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens''.

The original composer for all six Star Wars films, John Williams, will be returning to this film.

Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Peter Mayhew, Kenny Baker and Anthony Daniels are the only actors that are coming back from the original trilogy.

Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill reportedly went on a strict diet and a lot of exercise in order to get fit for their parts as Leia and Luke.

Once he was cast as Poe Dameron in the movie, Oscar Isaac told J.J. Abrams that his uncle was a huge fan of 'Star Wars'. As a result, he received an invitation to visit the set and Abrams asked him if he wanted to appear as an extra in the film, obviously he accepted immediately.

Bill Hader was about lend his voice to BB-8 in the original version of ''Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens'', but J.J. Abrams thought it was too human. At the end the sounds were made up from different app alerts.

The actor Warwick Davis appears in the three trilogies of the saga. In the original plays Wicket in 'Return of the Jedi' in the prequels is Wald in 'The Phantom Menace' and in ''Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens'' is Wollivan.

In 'A New Hope' Darth Vader locks Leia in the cell 2187. Finn, John Boyega's character in ''Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens'', goes by the name FN-2187 as an imperial soldier, in a clear nod to the original film directed by George Lucas.

Michael Arndt was originally hired as the screenwriter but left the production months later and was replaced by J.J. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan.

Daniel Craig, dressed as a stormtrooper, share a scene with Rey, the character played by Daisy Ridley.

Oscar Isaac was nearly forced to drop out of the film due to scheduling conflicts with theater commitments.

Harrison Ford broke his ankle while shooting the movie in the Millenium Falcon. And a year later, J.J. Abrams revealed that he broke his back while trying to help his actor out.

Although this is the second Star Wars film to be released in IMAX, it is the first to have IMAX cameras in use during filming.

J.J. Abrams said that he would like to shoot a scene in which the skeleton of Jar Jar Binks could be seen some place in the desert for just a moment.

Simon Pegg is behind Unkar Plutt, the petty trader of the Jakku planet.

Simon Pegg is only the second actor to appear in both a Star Wars and Star Trek film, after actor Deep Roy. George Takei appeared in Star Trek films, but only appeared in the Television series Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

The film has a budget of 200 million dollars which is the highest budget of a Star Wars film so far.

Starkiller, the name that Luke could have before George Lucas decided that he liked Skywalker, is the name of the new Death Star.