STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS Passes $600 Million Worldwide

It has set box office records for biggest opening in countries including the United Kingdom, Australia and Russian Federation. Final numbers for the J.J. Abrams-directed flick came in today, with The Force Awakens posting an all-time industry-high of $247,966,675 domestically and $281 million internationally for an all-time record global debut of $529 million since its opening day (December 16th).

The film’s producer Frank Marshall tweeted his congratulations to the creative team behind “The Force Awakens” for scoring the “biggest opening weekend in galactic history”.

The Force Awakens just has to make $37.1 million between China, India, and the other remaining global markets to simply meet Jurassic World’s foreign gross total, which would in turn easily surpass the worldwide opening weekend gross totals.

Following the upbeat performance, many sell side firms have pitched in favor of Walt Disney Co (NYSE:DIS).

The cited salaries are prior to box office bonuses, but those won’t kick in until the film crosses the hallowed $1 billion line worldwide, according to Variety. Just this afternoon, The Force Awakens picked up $17 million to $22 million and should finish the day with $30 million-plus. Early morning estimates for Disney’s first LucasFilm release have the movie pulling in between $40 million to $40.2 million on Monday, from 4,134 venues. The rest of the top five is comprised of last week’s champ The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (weekend gross $5.6 million, total gross $254.4 million) and Rocky spinoff/sequel/reboot (rebootqueloff?) Creed (weekend gross $5 million, total gross $87.9 million). Richard Greenfield, analyst at BTIG downgraded the company last week as there was a drop in number of ESPN subscribers to 92 million this year, against 95 million and 99 million over last two consecutive years.

Disney’s “Star Wars” lands (Florida and California)? It didn’t say anything about episode seven, leading us to ask if anyone else gets a Takodana vibe from Disney’s released concept art for land after seeing the new film?

“Star Wars” has a winning formula that includes legions of fans devoted to the franchise and marketing momentum ramped up by Hollywood entertainment titan Disney.

So the answer to our original question by the most subjective measures we have is that no, The Force Awakens is not the best movie in the Star Wars saga, but it’s pretty darn close.