-text c-gray-1" >If you suspected that Star Wars: The Force Awakens would smash box office records when you saw the lengthy queues at your local theater, you made a pretty good guess. Disney expects the adventures of Finn, Poe and Rey to set an all-time domestic debut record with an estimated $238 million haul. The previous best, this summer's Jurassic World, "only" pulled in $208.8 million. On top of that, TFA also broke several other domestic records, including the biggest single-day gross ($120.5 million), biggest Thursday preview ($57 million), best December debut and multiple IMAX records. Worldwide, it's estimated to rake in $517 million over its first five days -- and that $4 billion Lucasfilm purchase suddenly seems like the bargain of the century.
Some international records tumbled, too, such as the biggest opening weekends in Australia ($18.9 million), Germany ($27.3 million), Russia ($12.3 million and the UK ($48.9 million).
It doesn't take much to understand why the movie succeeded, of course. You're combining one of the biggest franchises ever with one of the industry's more accomplished directors and an almost overwhelming level of hype. It'd be surprising if the movie didn't succeed. Still, this is a watershed moment for geek culture as a whole. While there have certainly been successful sci-fi movies in the past (including this fall's The Martian), it's rare that they dominate the media landscape so completely.
Heads-up: the comments are likely to be rife with spoilers, so you may want to skip them if you have yet to watch the movie.
Coverage: Hollywood Reporter In this article: av, boxoffice, culture, disney, entertainment, JjAbrams, lucasfilm, record, starwars, starwarstheforceawakens, TheForceAwakens All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Comments 29 Shares Share Tweet Share Save Popular on Engadget
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It doesn't take much to understand why the movie succeeded, of course. You're combining one of the biggest franchises ever with one of the industry's more accomplished directors and an almost overwhelming level of hype. It'd be surprising if the movie didn't succeed. Still, this is a watershed moment for geek culture as a whole. While there have certainly been successful sci-fi movies in the past (including this fall's The Martian), it's rare that they dominate the media landscape so completely.
Heads-up: the comments are likely to be rife with spoilers, so you may want to skip them if you have yet to watch the movie.
Coverage: Hollywood Reporter In this article: av, boxoffice, culture, disney, entertainment, JjAbrams, lucasfilm, record, starwars, starwarstheforceawakens, TheForceAwakens All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Comments 29 Shares Share Tweet Share Save Popular on Engadget
Pennsylvania court rules suspect can't be forced to provide his password
View Astronomers create first global map of Saturn's moon Titan
View Microsoft gets US license to resume selling software to Huawei
View Protesters accuse Google of retaliating against organizing workers
View Facebook built a facial recognition app that identified employees
View From around the web
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