Star Wars: The Force Awakens destroys box office records on opening weekend

More important, with audiences in the US and most foreign countries embracing the movie, Disney is setting up “Star Wars” to be a success in many media for years to come, including annual big-screen sequels and spinoffs, merchandise, television shows and theme-park attractions.

The Force Awakens also set a new opening-day record of more than $9.4 million.

Ticket sales are estimated to have made $238m (£159.7m) – the previous record was held by Jurassic World, which took $208.8m in June.

As expected, The Force Awakens has achieved a historic opening weekend, toppling box office records like Ewoks knocking over AT-STs. The film is now playing in 32 worldwide markets, opening at No. 1 one in each of them and taking in a total of $72.7 million overseas in a two-day period, Disney said. The film cost about $200 million to make, according to industry estimates.

However, the sci-fi blockbuster still has a long way to the top of all-time box office sales, with James Cameron’s “Avatar” holding the record at $2.78 billion.

Guess that $4 billion dollar initial investment that Disney made in LucasFilm is paying off.

– Biggest opening weekend of all time in United Kingdom (4-day), Australia, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Austria, Poland (3-day), Denmark (5-day), Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Croatia, Ukraine, Iceland, Serbia, New Zealand. In North America, the film sold a record $100 million worth of presale tickets before Thursday previews began at approximately 7 p.m. EST.

That “Star Wars” was poised to shatter box office records was evident from the lines of moviegoers that formed in October when tickets went on advance sale. Greenfield said the success of “Force Awakens” would not offset the impact of subscriber losses at ESPN.

However, Amobee suggested that the sentiment that was Negative was primarily around people who have no intention of seeing Star Wars being annoyed others are talking about it so much or people upset that people on Twitter are posting spoilers.