It is probably no surprise that the new Star Wars movie is breaking historic records. Star Wars: The Force Awakens has kicked off its domestic release with an estimated $120.5 million Friday opening. That opening number includes a record-breaking $57 million from Thursday night previews, making this the first film to gross more than $100 million in a single day.
“The $120.5 million opening day for Star Wars marks the largest Friday, opening day and single day records previously held by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 at $91 million,” reported Brad Brevat of Box Office Mojo.
In just one day, the film also hauled in an estimated quarter of a billion dollars globally, challenging Avatar ($2.8 billion) as the high-grossing film of all time. Considering this is just the first weekend of Star Wars: The Force Awakens release, we can probably expect it to surpass 2.8 billion grossed globally within a short amount of time.
“This represents a new record for the industry and portends a massive and potentially record-breaking opening day and weekend for the film,” said Paul Dergarabedian of box-office tracker, Rentrak.
“Industry estimates currently range anywhere from $225-240 million for the weekend. As for comparisons, the best examples might seem to be recent ones such as the opening weekends of Jurassic World ($208.8M) and Avengers: Age of Ultron ($191.2M) from earlier this year. If you translate that to this Star Wars opening day would give us a range anywhere from $273-307 million,” Brad Brevat reports.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens is receiving very high praise from critics and fans alike. The film scored an “A” CinemaScore, which included an “A+” grade among women, and “A+” scores with younger audiences, both under 18 and under 25. 98% of audiences gave the film an “A” or “B”. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film thus far has received a 95 percent from critics, and 93 percent from fans.
Even the White House was eager to celebrate Star Wars, with President Obama stating “Clearly, this is not the most important event that’s taking place in the White House today. There is a screening of Star Wars for Gold Star families and children coming up. So I’ll try to be relatively succinct.” And in the best press conference sign-off in perhaps history, “Okay, everybody, I gotta get to Star Wars!”
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