People dressed in character pose outside the Grand Rex movie theater for photographers prior to a screening of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens ” in Paris, Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2015.
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Sunday’s estimate for Force Awakens was 7 million, including $238 million in North America, the biggest domestic opening of all time (Jurassic World debuted to $208.8 million).
The movie is likely to become the highest grossing film in an opening weekend Disney added, while reporting that it had already made $250 million globally.
Projected to bring in $17.1 million at Canadian box offices on its opening weekend, the J.J. Abrams-directed franchise movie has beaten the previous record held by Marvel’s The Avengers.
If final weekend numbers are even better, the film has a shot at matching or eclipsing “Jurassic World”, which garnered a whopping $524.9 million worldwide.
The Force Awakens has to settle for 2nd in the global sales stakes behind Jurassic World. In New York, some of the city’s larger theaters were playing the film every hour, beginning at 6:00 am.
Greenfield said the success of “Force Awakens” would not offset the impact of subscriber losses at ESPN.
The Force Awakens also set a new opening-day record of more than $9.4 million.
The dinosaur blockbuster took in $525 million when it launched, making it the biggest Box Office opening ever.
This photo provided by Disney/Lucasfilm shows a scene from the new film, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”.
A lot is riding on the film for Disney, which paid $4.06 billion for Lucasfilm in 2012.
The latest film returns to “a galaxy far, far away” some 30 years on from the action of 1983’s Return of the Jedi.
Interestingly enough, though women are accounting for only 36% of the North American box office on The Force Awakens, they liked the film slightly more: Women gave it a flawless A+ CinemaScore rating, while men gave it an A.
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A pair of counter-programmed movies also did well: “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip” opened in second place at $14.4 million in its opening weekend.
