‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ becomes fastest movie to $1 billion

Global and international records include biggest worldwide debut ($529 million); fastest film to $1 billion globally (12 days); biggest IMAX global debut ($48 million); and biggest opening weekend 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.

Jurassic World also had the benefit of record box office receipts in China.

The week between Christmas and New Year’s weekend is the most lucrative corridor of the year in terms of moviegoing, and the new films are hoping for strong multiples even with Force Awakens dominating much of the marketplace.

The Force Awakens opens in China on January 9, which the AP describes as “the world’s second-largest movie market”, and the J.J. Abrams-directed adventure is expected to make more waves at the box office there when it opens.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is already the #2 movie of 2015 to date and the #5 movie of all-time. In 2009, Avatar took 19 days to reach $1 billion globally.

“You nearly have to rewrite all the record books for this movie”, box office analyst Paul Dergarabedian told the AP on Sunday.

The power of “Star Wars” meant the rest of the week’s releases were competing for second place.

David O. Russell’s Joy, which stars Jennifer Lawrence, also had an excellent weekend, opening to an estimated $17.5 million. And it still has not opened in China.

The movie is also the quickest ever to hit benchmarks like $100 million, $200 million, $300 million, $400 million, and $500 million in North America as it has a current total of $544.6 million after a massive $153.5 million weekend. And Quentin Tarantino’s latest film, “The Hateful Eight”, debuted in 10th place with $4.5 million.

The company said the Star Wars film is bigger than ever and much bigger than what everyone there had thought.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at USA and Canadian theaters, according to Rentrak. Forbes figured that the collaborators are only shying away from potentially spoiling the movie for everyone so they opted against releasing a DLC for it in “Star Wars Battlefront”.