Star Wars: The Force Awakens became the biggest opening in movie history bringing in an estimated $238 million in the US this weekend.
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The seventh “Star Wars” movie is expected to sell more than $220 million of tickets at USA and Canadian theaters through Sunday, beating the record $208.8 million for “Jurassic World” in June, Walt Disney Co said on Saturday.
Fans of the series revelled in the chance to revisit the Star Wars galaxy at the weekend. Thousands gathered for a friendly light sabre battle in downtown Los Angeles on Friday, and moviegoers in cities such as Berlin and Paris arrived at screenings wearing Stormtrooper costumes, Jedi robes and Darth Vader masks.
Chris Geer poses for a photo in front of the Star Wars movie poster with his son Ethan during opening night of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” at Century Theatre in Boulder, Colo., Thursday, Dec. 17, 2015.
It also had the biggest single-day in sales for any movie, along with the biggest Friday a film has ever had with $120.5 million. Saturday domestic receipts were expected to total $US60 million, Disney said.
That puts it within striking distance of the global opening weekend record of $316.1 million and the record for a worldwide – that is foreign and domestic grosses combined – opening weekend of $524.9 million within range. Disney bought “Star Wars” producer Lucasfilm for $4 billion in 2012 and spent more than $200 million to produce “Force Awakens”. China is the world’s second-largest film market.
“It might join the $2 billion club worldwide, and maybe, just maybe, be the highest grossing film of all-time”. Whether “The Force Awakens” can come close to the global hauls of those films ($2.8 billion for “Avatar” and $2.2 billion for “Titanic“) won’t be clear for weeks.
The trio of heroes who appeared in the first of the blockbusters in 1977 – smuggler Han Solo (Harrison Ford), Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), leader of the rebel alliance, and her twin brother Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) – are all back and played by the actors that Star Wars first made famous.
The movie, directed by J.J. Abrams, scored a 95 per cent positive rating on review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes.
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Audience polling firm CinemaScore gave the new release an A grade, including an A-plus among women and younger audiences.
