‘Force Awakens’ on path for $100M Friday, $200M-plus weekend

White House spokesman Josh Earnest later appeared at the press room dais flanked by two Star Wars stormtroopers, along with R2D2.

Get ready for an influx of Star Wars box office reports, because Star Wars: The Force Awakens has been breaking records since pre-sale tickets went online, and it’s showing no signs of slowing down.

Jurassic World holds the record for highest Saturday and Sunday box office results, taking in around $69.6 million on its first Saturday in theaters and $57.2 million on its first Sunday.

As you might expect, those kinds of numbers are no fluke, and now The Force Awakens is on track stomp a couple of more records in its opening weekend.

Disney also boosted its Friday estimate from at least $100 million in the early afternoon to $120 million by the late afternoon to as much as $125 million by late evening.

All three of those records were previous held by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 in 2011, which took in $91.1 million on its first day. That includes the biggest single day ever in the United Kingdom, where it made an estimated $14.4 million.

“The Force Awakens” could also eclipse the global opening weekend record of $316.1 million by “Jurassic World” – along with the dinosaur movie’s worldwide opening record of $524.9 million.

3-D screening accounted for 47% of the night’s grosses on Thursday.

“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. “The Force Awakens” is set 30 years after the events of 1983’s “Star Wars: Return of the Jedi”. Critics have hailed it as a fan-friendly return to form for the franchise; the American Film Institute listed it among its top 10 films of the year.

But so far, “The Force Awakens” is attracting the interest of seemingly everyone.

Even the White House is not immune to The Force. “There’s a screening of Star Wars” for people who lost a family member in the Iraq war”.

After fielding questions, Obama concluded the press conference: “OK everybody, I got to get to ‘Star Wars'”.