Disney’s failure to secure a timely release for Star Wars: The Force Awakens in China saw the latest instalment of the space saga fall just short of Jurassic World’s $524.9m (£352m) world record box-office opening on early estimates this weekend.
The Force Awakens secured $517m, including all-time records of $238m at the US box office and £32.8m in the UK (over four days, having opened on Thursday). However, the world record may yet still be surpassed when final totals for Sunday screenings are tallied today.
If Abrams’s critically acclaimed film does fail to surpass Jurassic World, studio bosses can point to the fact that the movie does not hit screens in the world’s most populous nation until 9 January. When Jurassic World debuted in June, it arrived on US and Chinese screens over the same weekend in a rare moment of global synchronicity.
The Force Awakens is opening far outside the lucrative summer period where blockbusters usually rack up massive openings, but will go into its second week expecting to drop very little on its first-week total, as families catch the movie over the Christmas holiday. It may well beat Jurassic World to a new record for fastest film to reach $1bn worldwide; the dinosaur disaster epic got there in just 14 days in June.
Other records broken by The Force Awakens this weekend include the best ever Imax global opening of $48m (beating Jurassic World’s $44.1m), and the best opening weekend in Russia, Australia, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Austria, Denmark, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Croatia, Ukraine, Iceland, Serbia and New Zealand. Abrams’s film also posted the most pre-sales ever, with more than $100m worldwide, and the biggest US December debut of all time.
There was little in the way of competition at the North American box office, as rival studios opted to steer clear of Star Wars’s opening date. The animated sequel Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Trip took advantage of its rival’s PG-13 certificate to hoover up audiences heading to the cinema with younger children, landing in second place with $14.4m on debut. And the comedy Sisters, starring Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, also did reasonably well as R-rated adult-skewed counter-programming, opening with $13.4m in third.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 scored another $5.7m in fourth, for a fifth-week total of $254.4m in North America, and the top five was rounded out by Rocky spin-off Creed, with $5.1m in its fourth week, contributing to a total of $87.9m.
Two Bollywood productions – the musical comedy Dilwale and historical epic Bajirao Mastani – took advantage of the dearth of new English-language movies to sneak into the top 10 in ninth and 10th spots, with bows of $1.9m and $1.7m respectively.
