Star Wars: The Force Awakens Breaks Box Office Records

If you haven’t yet had a chance to see the latest Star Wars film yet (read our review of The Force Awakens here), you might want to bookmark this story and get yourself to a cinema pronto, or else risk being spoiled.

The new Star Wars movie has set a global opening weekend record, smashing past the previous record holder Jurassic World to rake in US$529 million (S$744.64 million), Walt Disney Co said on Monday. Jefferies’ report indicated that the continuous slowdown of Disney’s ESPN business will hurt the company long term. Well the worldwide total has been adjusted up $3 million to $281 million, and yesterday, estimates put the film’s domestic total at $238 million, which easily bested Jurassic World’s $208 million record set earlier this year. It is the seventh in the “Star Wars” saga, and the first film starring beloved characters like Harrison Ford’s Han Solo and Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia since 1983’s “Return of the Jedi”.

The movie could become the highest-grossing movie of all time, box office analysts said.

The movie, which opened in theatres Thursday evening, blew past the last record-holder, The Avengers, which made $15.6 million in Canada on its opening weekend in 2012. Even if The Force Awakens does not surpass the worldwide grosses of Avatar or Titanic, bringing in at least $2 billion during its theatrical run is not a farfetched total. The most-tweeted word in reaction to the movie this weekend was “spoiler”, followed by “good” and “excited”. The largest age group talking about Force Awakens on Facebook was the 18-34 demo, but the 35-54 demo was most passionate with the most interactions per person.

However, the dinosaur franchise had the added benefit of a Chinese audience for its opening weekend figure – Star Wars won’t open there until January 9. It is also the fastest film in history to cross $200 million at the domestic box office. The final two episodes of this newest Star Wars trilogy are scheduled for 2017 and 2019.