‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ opening weekend reaches $250 million globally

The first “Star Wars” film in a decade took in a total of $517 million at box offices around the world, second only to the dinosaur film “Jurassic World”, which had the benefit of an opening weekend that included China, where “Force Awakens” won’t open for weeks.

Yesterday’s £8.6 million ($12.8 million) takings were the biggest Saturday figure of all time in the United Kingdom and Ireland, beating the two current leading three-day openers, “Skyfall” and “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2” at this stage in release.

Force Awakens’ performance sets a new standard for how much the North American box office can expand with the right movie, and puts pressure on Hollywood studios to make events out of their Big Pictures. By last Friday, global ticket sales had reached US$129.5 million as the movie set opening-day records in Britain, Germany, Australia, Brazil and other countries.

It goes without saying that the seventh episode in the “Star Wars” saga topped the weekend box office, but the question is was it enough to surpass “Jurassic World” as the biggest opening weekend of all time? Subsequent weekend records, however, are still up for grabs along with the fastest to $300 million and so on, not to mention the overall domestic record now held by Avatar at $760.5 million.

Harrison previously revealed he admires the never-ending enthusiasm of Stars Wars fans. The film is reportedly playing in more than 4,000 theaters domestically and began its massive weekend run with a record-breaking $57 million in ticket sales for early showings Thursday night.

It was a foregone conclusion that Friday’s single-day record, also held by the final Harry Potter film, would also fall given that the Thursday record was beaten by such a wide margin.

“The Force Awakens” opened this weekend in virtually every major market except Greece, India and China, where it will debut on January 9. Disney’s carefully planned release of film trailers and information over several months also boosted sales, he said.

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

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 and Creed rounded out the top five, earning $5.7 million and $5.1 million respectively. It’s the first Star Wars film to be made without creator George Lucas.