‘Star Wars’ tops DiCaprio in ‘Revenant’ to stay No. 1

The Force Awakens has a box office total around the world of $1.73 billion after just three weeks of release.

The Force was strong with Leonardo DiCaprio, but not quite strong enough to dethrone “Star Wars” from its perch atop box office charts.

“Star Wars” posted huge opening weekend numbers in China, the world’s second largest film market, where it debuted Saturday.

Natalie Dormer-starrer The Forest came in on the higher end of expectations, opening to $13.1-M from 2,451 theaters to place # 4. The film is still sitting atop the box office charts almost a month after its release, and it’s broken so many records that it’s getting hard to keep track of them all. Previous year was led by Taken 3’s $39.2 million and Selma’s $11.3 million first weekend of wide release.

And Paramount’s “The Big Short” made $6.3 million. Avatar went on to gross $2.788 billion in 2009, and while it’s believed that Star Wars: The Force Awakens will have no problem toppling Titanic’s sum it still remains to be seen if it will have the momentum to even reach, let alone surpass, Avatar’s record breaking sum. Avatar’s all-time worldwide record of $2.788 million certainly isn’t out of range either.

Furious 7 was China’s #1 grossing film previous year, pulling in $390.9 million.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens just barely managed to edge out its biggest competition this weekend: Golden Globes juggernaut The Revenant, which made its nationwide debut this weekend to the tune of $38 million. A couple of Fox films took the next two spots with Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip bringing in an estimated $5.5M lifting its total to $75M and awards-hopeful Joy taking in an estimated $4.5M bringing its cume up to $46M.

Fifth on the list was “Sisters”, with Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, at US$7.2 million its fourth week out.

“The Force Awakens” brought in an estimated $41.6 million, but the real story was overseas. The animated/live action hybrid was down 55% from last weekend, with its total gross up to $75.6 million domestically and $111.8 million worldwide. Of the Top 10 films in the U.S. on the weekend, only Focus Features’ The Forest was in theatres for the first time, coming in fourth at $US13.1 million.