The Force (and relentless marketing efforts) is definitely with the latest Star Wars trilogy as Episode VII: The Force Awakens becomes the fastest film to hit the US$1 billion mark. It beats out the gigantic dinosaur flick Jurassic World by one day.
What makes this feat more incredible is this has done so without taking China’s ticket sales into consideration yet. The second-largest movie market in the world (China) will only start showing the J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars film on January 9th.
But that isn’t the only record the film has shattered. Let’s list some of them here:
- It earned the biggest Christmas Day box office at $43.9 million.
- It earned $153.5 million, according to estimated ticket sales by Rentrak, in its second weekend playing in North America (US and Canada), earning it the title of best second weekend earnings. While internationally it earned $133.3 million.
- In North America, it all set the new opening weekend record at $238 million, again besting Jurassic World, while also setting opening weekend records in Australia, New Zealand, and throughout Europe.
- It has also topped $100 million in IMAX screenings in 10 days. Yes, that’s another record broken.
- And it scored the biggest worldwide debut at $529 million.
“You almost have to rewrite all the record books for this movie,” box office analyst Paul Dergarabedian of Rentrak said. “It’s absolutely mind-blowing that ‘Star Wars’ could get to a billion dollars in 12 days and it hasn’t even opened in China, the second biggest movie market in the world.”
Source: AP
