Star Wars: The Force Awakens breaks all Box Office records. Ever

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” grossed an estimated $238 million for the studio in the United States and Canada through Sunday, the biggest opening weekend for a film ever, reports Box Office Mojo.

The Thursday night record set in July 2011 for the release of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2”, which took in $43.5 million, has already been broken by “The Force Awakens”.

“This represents a new record for the industry and portends a massive and potentially record-breaking opening day and weekend for the film”, said Paul Dergarabedian, of box office tracker Rentrak. A select number of theatres began screenings on Thursday night, the culmination of 17-hour-long Star Wars marathon events.

Actors John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, Max von Sydow, Lupita Nyong’o and Gwendoline Christie will join the original stars of the saga, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, and Kenny Baker in the new film.

JJ Abrams initially rejected the opportunity to direct Star Wars: The Force Awakens because he did not want to be regarded as “the guy who does sequels”, The Guardian reported on Saturday.

The Hobbit’s previous December opening weekend record was $84.62 million and the single day record was a paltry $37.13 million, which puts into context just how big this opening really is.

It’s no surprise that Star Wars Episode VII is poised to have one of the greatest opening weekends in history. For example, on Twitter alone Star Wars: The Force Awakens was mentioned more than two million times on Thursday, which also happened to make it the most-tweeted-about movie ever, according to social media analytics firm Union Metrics.

The movie is opening three years after Disney paid $4.06 billion for Lucasfilm.

Droid BB-8 arrives at the world premiere of the film “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood, Dec. 14, 2015. The record is held by “Avatar” with $2.8 billion.

Giving an end-of-year press conference, President Barack Obama revealed he too was swept up by the mania.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is out in theaters, and Star Wars fever is back with force around the world.