As ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ continues to smash records in the world box office and has just passed the $1 billion mark, J.J. Abrams’ latest film might triumph over ‘Avatar’ as the world’s highest-grossing movie in history, as pointed out by a leading box office analyst.
Less than a week after the latest ‘Star Wars’ film was released in cinemas, it already raked in $610 million. Meanwhile, ‘Avatar’ pulled in $77 million for its opening weekend and $2.78 billion all in all since it was released in 2009.
Paul Dergarabedian, a senior media analyst at Rentrak, opened up about how ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ has great potential in soaring to number one and topping James Cameron’s blockbuster film.
"Given the incredible current box office trajectory and the overwhelmingly positive response to the film, a expected phenomenal second weekend and with China yet to come in January, if any film has a chance to break into the $2 billion club and have the potential to become the highest grossing film of all-time globally, ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ is that film," he explained.
Other movies included in the list of the highest grossing movies of all-time include ‘Titanic’ with $2.19 billion and ‘Jurassic World’ with $1.67 billion.
Such achievement has become an impressive milestone for ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ due to the fact that the film is yet to make its official premiere in China, one of the largest movie markets in the world, on Jan. 9.
"The speed with which records are falling is a testament to the audience broadening out. And you're seeing extraordinary repeat business," Disney's distribution chief Dave Hollis said in an interview with Hollywood Reporter.
The premiere of ‘Star Wars: Episode VII’ has been aided by mostly positive reviews along with a long-standing popularity for a space action franchise whose last three movies were not deemed as stunningly successful projects.
Acquired by Disney from its original owner Lucasfilm for $4 billion in 2012, the ‘Star Wars’ franchise was associated with a goal to come up with a more impressive cinematic universe similar to that of Marvel's sequence of successful superhero movies.
