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New ‘Star Wars’ marches its way into box office record books

Through Friday, worldwide ticket sales reached $US129.5 million, setting opening-day records in Britain, Germany, Brazil, Australia and other countries. The Burbank, California-based company acquired “Star Wars” owner Lucasfilm for $4 billion in 2012, one of several deals Iger used to build for the future.

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Global sales for The Force Awakens finished second only to the dinosaur film Jurassic World, which in its June opening garnered United States dollars 525 million worldwide, including China, where the Star Wars film will not open for weeks.


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Disney is projecting a domestic weekend total of around $220 million, which would surpass the record $208.8 million of “Jurassic World“.


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Disney plans four Star Wars movies through 2019, plus major expansions at its U.S. theme parks to incorporate the droids, spaceships and otherworldly creatures of the universe Lucas invented.

Force Awakens began rolling out in global markets on Wednesday.

It introduces three new main characters: a young scavenger called Rey (the striking Daisy Ridley); Finn (John Boyega), a stormtrooper with a conscience; and a Han Solo-like buccaneering pilot Poe (Oscar Isaac) in Princess Leia’s – or General Leia as she is now called – Resistance.

Titanic and Avatar, the two highest grossing movies of all time, opened to smaller initial numbers but had long life spans at the box office.

The movie is now open in all markets except Greece and India, where it opens December 24, and China, which has set a January 9 debut. The last Star Wars movie in 2005 collected just Dollars 9 million there.

Cornwall says the Sony Pictures staff tend do hold sweepstakes on how films will rate, and guesses around this film only averaged at about $3.8 million, “so it’s exceeded that by quite a large margin”.

Audience polling firm CinemaScore gave the new release an A grade, including an A-plus among women and younger audiences.

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The financial force was strong with the new “Star Wars” film.

Peter Mayhew plays Chewbacca and Harrison Ford is Han Solo in “Star Wars The Force Awakens.”