Star Wars: The Force Awakens smashes box offices worldwide

“Star Wars” fever has spread through movie theaters around the globe, even reaching the White House, as the franchise yet again began toppling box-office records with waves of lightsaber-wielding fans.

The film also set a new opening day box office record in the United Kingdom and Ireland after it drew in £9.64m – beating the previous one set by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, which got £9.48m on its first day.

Disney also reported Friday that “The Force Awakens” had grossed $72.7 million in two days from 44 worldwide markets with the U.K., Germany, Sweden and Norway generating single-day records.

Fans dressed as Star Wars characters parade outside a movie theater showing “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” Saturday, Dec. 19, 2015, in Taipei, Taiwan. For the whole weekend, industry estimates put the total cash intake at somewhere between $250 and $275 million. In addition, IMAX reported record grosses in Japan, U.K., and France, which represents the third, fourth and fifth, respectively, largest box offices in the world. Greenfield said the success of “Force Awakens” would not offset the impact of subscriber losses at ESPN. Jurassic World, which holds the second spot, had a revenue/theatre ratio of $48,855. Harrison Ford clearly won’t be back for meaty action in Star Wars, but it’s not impossible to see I’m returning as a Force Ghost-esque vision that speaks to Ren a he battles the darkness within him.

Audiences awarded an “A” rating in polling by survey firm CinemaScore, Disney said.

At that rate, the long-awaited space epic is poised to out-earn Universal’s reboot, “Jurassic World”, which broke the record for the biggest domestic opening by selling $208.8 million in tickets in June. Opening day box office includes the revenue from the Thursday previews. Mimicking in many ways the Luke/Leia/Han group (but significantly turning it on its head), the new stars Rey/Finn/Poe were brought in to carry the next trilogy of films. The record is held by “Avatar” with $2.8 billion.

The Star Wars franchise has a fresh set of faces leading it in its galaxy far, far away, a pair of formerly unknown actors named Daisy Ridley and John Boyega.