Star Wars: The Force Awakens Obliterates Global Box Office Records

Unless you’ve been living under a very sizeable rock on the planet furthest from the bright centre of the universe, you should be well aware that a new ‘Star Wars’ movie just opened in cinemas worldwide.

Given the heavy marketing, intense fan anticipation and hugely positive early word of mouth, there was never much doubt that ‘The Force Awakens’ would prove to be a huge hit - but it may wind up even bigger than imagined.

Disney had hoped it would be the first film to break the $100 million mark at the US box office on its opening day - and according to figures at Box Office Mojo it did this by a considerable margin, earning a whopping $120.5 million (approx £81 million) on Friday 18 December alone.

This comfortably trashes the existing US opening day record held by ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2,’ which made $91 million (£61 million) on its first day.

On top of this, ‘The Force Awakens’ had already made an unprecedented $57 million (£38 million) from its US Thursday night preview screenings.

It’s a similar story across the world. Here in the UK, ‘The Force Awakens’ has taken $24.7 million (£16.69 million); in Germany, $12.7 million (£8.53 million); in France, $11.1 million (£7.45 million); in Australia, $10.4 million (£6.98 million).

It’s scored the highest ever opening day box office takings in - deep breath - UK/Ireland, Germany, Australia, Brazil, New Zealand, Belgium, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland (French-speaking), Austria, Ukraine, Slovakia, Croatia, Iceland, Serbia, Chile, Peru, Poland, and Hungary (these figures via Coming Soon).

We could go on, but you get the point. In total, the film has, as of 19 December, made $129.5 million (£86.96 million) internationally, which combined with its US takings is an opening weekend of $250 million.

There’s yet another record broken, as this year’s ‘Jurassic World’ previously had the biggest opening weekend ever of $208.8 million (£140 million).

It’s also worth noting that there are still plenty of territories ‘The Force Awakens’ hasn’t opened in yet, notably the lucrative market of China.

Could ‘The Force Awakens’ be the first movie to stand a very real chance of toppling ‘Avatar’s all-time global box office record of $2.788 billion (31.87 billion)? We’ll see. The force is most definitely strong with this one…

Picture Credit: Lucasfilm/Disney

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