Star Wars: The Force Awakens becomes fastest movie to US$1 billion

Today, The Walt Disney Co. announced that its crossed the $1 billion mark in just 12 days – making it the fastest film to reach the milestone.

It set the record for best Christmas Day box office with $49.3 million, topping Sherlock Holmes’ $24.6 million in 2009.

The previous record for reaching the $1 billion mark was “Jurrasic World’ doing it in 13 days during the summer of 2015”.

Worldwide results exclude China, where the film premiered on Sunday but will only open to the public on January 9, according to Disney. It scored the biggest worldwide debut with $529 million.

Disney, which acquired Lucas films in 2012 for $4 billion, which created Star Wars, plans to make up to five more of the movies for this series.

Over the three-day Christmas holiday weekend, it topped the North American box office, snapping up $153.5 million in estimated ticket sales, which analysts at the Rentrak research company said was the biggest second weekend of all time.

On Twitter, Electronic Arts replied, “Our team is focusing on the original trilogy for this release of Star Wars Battlefront”. But as it turns out, The Force Awakens nearly had a title that might sound quite familiar to fans well-versed in the European Union and its vast collection of novels and connected stories.

The Jennifer Lawrence film Joy – which sees the actress reunite with Silver Linings Playbook director David O Russell for the biopic about the creator of the Miracle Mop – took $17.5m (£11.8m).

Some estimates have it on track to earn as much as $1 billion in North America, and regardless of whether that happens, it will certainly top Avatar’s haul of $760.5 million.

“It’s great for the audiences, great for studios and theater owners in particular who can point to this and say the movie theater industry is as viable and relevant as it’s ever been”, he said.