Star Wars smashes U.S. box office record

Stockbroker Hargreaves Lansdown said: “In its last trading update, management highlighted that two forthcoming major releases – Star Wars: The Force Awakens and latest Bond movie Spectre – were likely to be big draws at the box office”. Whilst that figure is slightly behind Jurassic World’s $524m, it’s expected that once the final numbers have been calculated, Star Wars will have nabbed that record too. The Force Awakens was beaten by Jurassic World simply because it has yet to launch in China.

The Force well-and-truly awakened box office tills at the weekend, as the latest Star Wars movie rang up record-breaking receipts. That record was only set back in June following the release of Jurassic World.

The film has performed particularly well in premium formats, with 3D showings accounted for 47% of tickets sales and Imax adding another 12%. Force Awakens shattered records in a number of key territories, including the United Kingdom, where it earned almost $50 million in its first four days.

That’s nearly $9 million than the previous record holder, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, which grossed $18.36 million in July 2011. On Saturday alone, the film took £8.6m, the biggest business done on a Saturday for a movie ever in the UK.

According to Disney, the North American audience on the opening weekend was predominantly male (58 per cent), with ticket holders in the 26-34 age bracket making up the largest chunk of the audience (26 per cent), followed by those between the ages of 35 and 49 ( 24 per cent ).

Well, everyone knew it was going to be big.

Abrams’ sequel, set 30 years after the events of Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi, features a strong female heroine in Rey, a young scavenger played by newcomer Daisy Ridley.

Disney purchased “Star Wars” producer Lucasfilm for $4 billion in 2012 and is betting that big-budget films can draw customers even as viewers gravitate to online streaming and mobile viewing and theater attendance declines.