This updated $120 – $125 million number includes a $57 million total for Thursday “preview” shows, which is also a record for Thursday previews. Ticket sales Thursday night and Friday surpassed previous records set by the final “Harry Potter” film in 2011. (The jokes were a surprise, too, provoking the kind of laughter many comedies fail to muster.) Elsewhere, the sand dune landscapes have a touch of Lawrence of Arabia majesty, vindicating Abrams’s long-standing dedication to shooting on film rather than digital, cinematographer Dan Mindel augmenting the 35mm stock with some lush 65mm Imax footage.
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When the 23-year-old asked the crowd what they thought of the movie, he was met with loud cheers.
An Indian Star Wars fan gets himself photographed with a “Stormtrooper” character from the latest film “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” at the “Mumbai Film and Comic Con 2015” in Mumbai on December 19, 2015.
Audiences awarded an “A” rating in polling by survey firm CinemaScore, Disney said. It also earned a 95% fresh rating from RottenTomatoes. The movie opens in USA theaters on Friday, Dec. 18, 2015.
Rentrak projects that “The Force Awakens”, which reviewers describe as both a tribute to the 1977 original and a reboot of the saga, is on its way to a stellar $220 million opening weekend. However, those numbers began to look like conservative estimates following Thursday and Friday screenings.
The early figures suggest “The Force Awakens” is on course to exceed the record domestic opening of “Jurassic World, ” which debuted with $208.8 million in June.
Everything you need to know before seeing Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
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And while many analysts expected the film to collect $1.5 billion to $2 billion globally, “The Force Awakens” is now predicted to gross $2.6 billion worldwide. That was in part thanks to record-breaking opening-day sales in Britain, Germany, Australia, Brazil, Spain and Japan.
