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‘Star Wars’ finishes Christmas weekend with record haul
Posted On Dec 29 2015
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“The Force Awakens” has now sold $1.09 billion of tickets globally, making the $200 million-plus production very profitable and, more important for Disney, re-establishing “Star Wars” as a major global franchise.
Darth Vader, formerly Anakin Skywalker, was supposed to make an appearance in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”.
The latest “Star Wars” space epic surpassed the $1 billion mark in global box office sales in record time, Disney announced Sunday, as fans of the space epic packed theaters around the world.
The previous record-holder was Jurassic World, which reached one billion dollars in 13 days in June – and that with the benefit of record grosses in China. Domestically, “The Force Awakens” has grossed a mammoth $544.6 million. Shadows of the Empire was the name of Steve Perry’s novel, which bridged the gap between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Although the attendees during the movie’s opening weekend skewed male at 67%, that gender breakdown has changed a little bit over the Christmas holiday. Online, Hayden Christensen, who portrayed Anakin Skywalker in the prequels, could turn up in either “Star Wars: Episode VIII” or in next year’s “Rogue One”. Once it reaches its next massive film market in China, overtaking Avatar as the highest grossing movie of all time will be an inevitability.
The power of “Star Wars” meant the rest of the week’s releases were competing for second place.
“You nearly have to rewrite all the record books for this movie”, said Paul Dergarabedian, a box office analyst. They will, however, know what he looks like because a new book titled The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens includes concept art that reveals how he would’ve appeared. The second Hollywood film to cross the $2 billion milestone was Titanic (1997).
The film earned $500 million at the domestic box office in just 10 days.
The Lucasfilm Story Group’s creative executive said on Twitter that The Force Awakens was referred to as Shadow of the Empire for quite a bit of its development time.
