‘Force Awakens’ on path for record $200M-plus weekend

Disney bought Star Wars producer Lucasfilm for $US4 billion in 2012 and spent more than $US200 million to produce Force Awakens.

The same tactic, coupled with the decision to open the film on a Monday, enabled Spectre to set the record for the biggest opening ever at the United Kingdom and Ireland box office.

The seventh film in the main “Star Wars” franchise shattered the Thursday-evening record of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2”, which in the summer of 2011 opened with an overnight of $43.5 million.

The ticket sales figures from Walt Disney Co. late Friday indicated that the film could eclipse the $US208.8 million record set by dinosaur adventure film Jurassic World in June.

That strong word of mouth will help “The Force Awakens” attract the kind of repeat viewings that made James Cameron’s “Avatar” and “Titanic” the highest grossing films of all time.

The occasion? Visitors from a galaxy far, far away were on hand to celebrate a White House screening of “The Force Awakens” for military families.

Rentrak’s Paul Dergarabedian, one of Hollywood’s best-known box office analysts, said the film’s opening night performance in the USA and Canada “portends a massive and potentially record-breaking opening day and weekend for the film”.

Early reviews of the movie have given it a big thumbs-up and three more instalments are due in the coming years.

The film is being screened in 4,134 theaters in North America, a record for a December opening.

Star Wars fever is sweeping the nation, and we couldn’t be happier about it.

“The Force Awakens” picks up the intergalactic story of good versus evil 30 years on from “The Return of the Jedi“, the finale of the original trilogy. “So I’ll try to be relatively succinct”, the US President said at the beginning of his year ender press conference on Friday.

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.

The Stormtroopers and R2-D2 even joined White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest for a brief photo opportunity.