The box office receipts have now made official what your social media feed has made apparent for the past couple of days: a lot of people saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens this weekend. According to Variety, Disney—who owns LucasFilm—is estimating that the latest chapter of the intergalactic saga brought in a staggering $528 million worldwide this weekend, making it the most successful opening in film history. The previous record of $524.9 million was set by Jurassic World this summer.
While it’s a little surprising that the most popular film franchise of all time beat out the Jurassic Park reboot by just a handful of Donald Trump’s small loans, it’s worth noting that Star Wars has not yet opened in China, the world’s second largest film market. Jurassic World brought in over $90 million in China in its opening weekend this summer. With the exception of Korea and Vietnam, The Force Awakens is the number one film in every single country where it opened this weekend.
It’s been a big month or so for entertainment sales in general. In November, Adele‘s 25 sold 3.38 million copies in its first week in the United States alone, beating *NSYNC’s thought-to-be-unbeatable opening week in 2000, when No Strings Attached sold 2.42 million copies.
And you thought the monoculture was dead.
(via Variety)
