Star Wars characters storm White House press conference

The breaking news for movie-goers is that Star Wars: The Force Awakens could very well become the top-grossing film of all time. Some $100 million in advance tickets were sold for the movie’s Thursday night debut.

“Force Awakens” surpassed the previous opening day record of $43.5 million set in 2011 by the final “Harry Potter” movie.

That would set a record and beat the current opening weekend title holder, “Jurassic World”, which premiered earlier this year to $208.8 million at the box office.

So far, the film has pulled in roughly $250 million worldwide since opening overseas on Wednesday.

The new Star Wars film is the first instalment in a decade in the series created by George Lucas in 1977. Titanic and Avatar, the two highest grossing movies of all time, opened to smaller initial numbers but had long life spans at the box office.

It collected $US120.5 million on Friday, its first full day in domestic cinemas, the highest single-day ticket sales ever.

Roughly 58% of the “Force Awakens” audience was male while 63% of the audience was over the age of 25, according to data shared by the studio.

But Abrams, who was behind hit films including Star Trek and Star Trek: Into Darkness, talked the offer over with his wife and eventually agreed to take on the role of directing the biggest movie of the year. The movie opens in US theaters on Friday, Dec. 18, 2015.

3-D and Imax screenings are helping to propel the record gross. Playing in 4,134 theaters, “The Force Awakens” is the widest December release ever attempted.

Critics lavished praise on “Force Awakens”, which features newcomers Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and Oscar Isaac alongside original stars Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher.

President Barack Obama began his year-end press conference Friday by letting reporters know their meeting wouldn’t be the most important event taking place Friday.