Three weeks after opening in theaters, Star Wars: The Force Awakens has already become the highest-grossing movie in the history of American movie theaters.
Avatar’s $760.5 million was defeated by the seventh Star Wars installment on Wednesday afternoon when it surpassed the record set by the 2009 James Cameron science fiction drama. Disney made the announcement via a press release but didn’t share an exact number because the day isn’t over.
The Force Awakens’ next challenge is to overtake Titanic’s global box office which sits at $2.19 billion and holds the title of second-highest grossing film worldwide. At #1 is James Cameron’s other huge hit Avatar which has a global box office tally of $2.78 billion.
There’s still plenty of time for the movie to pull in lots of money. As of right now The Force Awakens has $1.54 billion in the bank, and it still hasn’t opened in China, whose movie market is expected to be larger than America’s by 2017.
In today’s press release, Disney also noted the domestic records The Force Awakens now holds:
- Fastest film to reach $100M (21 hours), $200M (3 days), $300M (5 days), $400M (8 days), $500M (10 days), $600M (12 days), and $700M (16 days)
- Biggest all-time debut and biggest December debut ($247.966M), propelling the industry to the biggest overall moviegoing weekend of all time ($313.3M for all films, Dec. 18-20)
- Biggest second weekend of all time ($149.2M), propelling the industry to the biggest overall Christmas weekend of all time ($296.4M for all films, Dec. 25-27)
- Biggest third weekend of all time ($90.2M)
- Biggest Thursday preview gross ($57M)
- Biggest Friday, opening, and single day ($119.1M)
- Biggest Sunday ($60.55M), Monday ($40.1M), and Tuesday ($37.3M)
- Biggest Christmas Day ($49.3M) and New Year’s Day ($34.39M)
- Highest per-theater average for a wide debut ($59,982)
- Biggest opening week ($390.85M)
- Biggest IMAX debut ($30.1M)
With many, many weeks to go until Star Wars leaves theaters, the movie certainly has a shot at taking down Titanic at the global box office. Less certain is its chances of overtaking Avatar globally.
Note: These numbers are not adjusted for box office inflation.
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