‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ sets another box office record

The space saga racked up US$391.1 million in its first week – obliterating the record of $296.2 million set in June by the first week of “Jurassic World”.

Abrams’ life-long friend Greg Grunberg – who also has a minor role in The Force Awakens as X-wing fighter Snap Wexley – said that the director recently read the script for Episode VIII and said something highly unusual, for him: that he “wished” he had written it. The Fox movie stayed at No. 2, grossing $3.4 million from 3,653 locations for a six-day domestic total of $24.7 million.

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”, the seventh episode of the “Star Wars” series, features Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley. The current record holder is Jurassic World (13 days), which had the benefit of opening day and date in China.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens was without doubt a huge hit, not only at the box office, but also with fans and critics alike. There are numerous homages in The Force Awakens to Lucas’ original film, and there are key departures.

Given the record breaking success and acclaim for The Force Awakens, Disney may well wish Abrams was still writing and directing the rest of the trilogy, if only because he is a proven commodity and then some.

The film is now projected to have a $150 million holiday weekend as the Christmas Day tickets were the third-highest preorders made through services like Fandango in the weeks prior to its debut. In order to surpass JW before 2016, it would need to make another $460 million worldwide on non-weekend days. So, of course, with this snazzy new “Star Wars” movie everyone loves being out, and with a snazzy new “Star Wars” game just happening to be out at the same time, you might be wondering, as one intrepid Twitter user was if there’s any crossover planned between the new flick and “Battlefront”. With $93.1 million internationally and $192.4 million worldwide, the latest from Pixar continues to have a very hard time trying to move the dial in any significant way towards recouping its rather large $200 million budget.