The opening weekend record is now held by “Jurassic World”, which premiered earlier this year to $208.8 million at the box office.
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The media giant’s DIS, -3.83% $4 billion bet that it could revive the “Star Wars” franchise for a new generation paid off this weekend as its first movie, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”, opened to an estimated $238 million in the USA and Canada. The movie opens in US theaters on Friday, Dec. 18, 2015. Whilst that figure is slightly behind Jurassic World’s $524m, it’s expected that once the final numbers have been calculated, Star Wars will have nabbed that record too.
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Biggest IMAX Thursday night preview ($5.7M), single-day ($14M, Friday), and weekend ($30.1M).
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Star Wars does not share the same universal popularity as other films in certain key markets around the world, such as China. If that’s not insane enough, get this: no December release has ever made $100 million dollars in its opening weekend, let alone in one day.
The film now holds a near ideal 95% score on review site, RottenTomatoes.com, and has many fans calling it the best film in the series since 1983’s “Return of the Jedi”.
“I would argue the two-year marketing campaign for “Star Wars: the Force Awakens” was flawless in its execution”, said Disney distribution chief Dave Hollis.
The current record holder is Avatar, which generated $US2.8 billion worldwide after its December 2009 release.
The Force Awakens stars veterans Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, along with newcomers Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Lupita Nyong’o, Andy Serkis and Domhnall Gleeson.
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So far, the Disney film has pulled in roughly $130 million worldwide since opening overseas on Wednesday.
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Nomura Securities analyst Anthony DiClemente, who rates Disney a “buy”, said he was more confident after seeing the movie that it could become the top-grossing film of all time.
