With an updated gross of $764.4 million through Wednesday, January 7, ‘Star Wars: the Force Awakens’ is officially the highest grossing film of all time in the domestic market.
It took a mere 20 days for the film to surpass the previous record of $760.5 million held by ‘Avatar’, which not only took a total of 318 days to achieve, but was spread across two releases, Boxofficemojo.com reported.
Harrison Ford now tops the BoxOfficeMojo people index, surpassing longtime chart topper and fellow Star Wars alum, Samuel L. Jackson. The domestic box office take for Ford’s films before adjusting for inflation totals a whopping $4.69 billion (for 41 movies), topping Jackson by $73 million (for 68 films). Adjusted for inflation, Ford has no competition as his total reaches $9.36 billion, over $2.2 billion more than Tom Hanks (having 43 movies) in second place.
By the end of the coming weekend the record will be an afterthought as ‘The Force Awakens’ will become the only film to cross $800 million domestically. From there the conversation turns to its continuing international prospects.
International numbers for Star Wars are relatively even with domestic totals so far, which is saying something when compared to the likes of worldwide chart toppers such as Avatar, Titanic and Jurassic World, all of which saw over 60% of their worldwide total come from overseas markets. A whopping 72.7% of Avatar’s number came from overseas.
In fact, a look at the top 25 films on the worldwide chart shows ‘Force Awakens’ is one of only six films with less than 60% of their overall worldwide gross coming from international territories.
At this point, it is difficult to determine just how big it will go, most of all because it has yet to release in China where Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader and the Force aren’t exactly known quantities. The Chinese release is slated for Saturday, January 9, but will it be able to match the $228 million earned by ‘Jurassic World’ or the $240 million brought in by ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’?
The film’s global box office currently stands at $1.57 billion and $2 billion seems likely at this point, but if it wants to threaten Titanic’s $2.186 billion for that second spot on the worldwide chart it’s going to need some help. As for Avatar’s $2.78 billion, it seems well out of reach at this point.
Produced with a budget of $200 million, the Disney/Lucasfilm has also spent over $70 million on advertising their epic film, which is a big number in advertising costs. Whether it can break other records or not, with the global gross of about $1.6 billion, the movie has already brought in almost 6 times more than its production and marketing budget in just three weeks.
