‘Star Wars’ smashes opening-day record on way to big weekend

Star Wars The Force Awakens hurtled toward Dollars 120 million at the U.S. and Canadian box office on Friday and a potential record-breaking USD 215 million through Sunday, giving the long-awaited movie a shot at the biggest opening weekend of all time. The record holder for the biggest opening during the month is “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”, which took in $85 million in domestic receipts in 2012.

The record for biggest box office opening weekend ever belongs to Universal’s “Jurassic World” which premiered to $208.8 million just six months ago.

That includes a chart-topping $US57 million from fans who rushed out to see the first showings on Thursday night.

The film is being screened in 4,134 theaters in North America, a record for a December opening. It easily blasted the prior record for an opening weekend of $209 million set by “Jurassic World” in June. Moreover, overall revenue hit an all-time high, crossing $300 million for the first time ever.

The J.J. Abrams-directed film, The Force Awakens, brings back Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill along with a new cast consisting of Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and Oscar Isaac. 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.

“‘Star Wars’ is the phenomenon it is and will continue to be, but there is another segment of the audience out there”, he added. And Imax’s worldwide debut was a record $17.9 million for a global debut of $48 million. Those those between the ages of 26 and 34 made up the largest chunk of the audience (26 percent), followed by those between the ages of 35 and 49.

Long StoryAvoiding Star Wars spoilers is an extremely hard task, even with threats to unfriend abound. Twentieth Century Fox tried to snag families with young children, offering up “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip”.

Rounding out the top five were “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2”, with $5.7 million and “Creed”, with $5.1 million.

In third place, the Tina Fey and Amy Poehler comedy “Sisters” earned an estimated $13.4 million out of the gates.