“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” drove to a stunning $813 million worldwide total in its first week, bringing in $27.6 million at the domestic box office on Thursday.
Holiday shopping and traveling finally may have taken a toll on Disney’s record-breaking blockbuster, which posted its lowest-grossing single day since making its debut last Friday.
But it still managed to break another record by capping a $391.1 million first week, easily outstripping the $296.2 million that “Jurassic World” achieved in June.
“The Force Awakens,” the J.J. Abrams-directed seventh film in the beloved sci-fi series, also came away with $20 million from overseas Thursday. That gives it a total foreign haul of $422 million from abroad, and an $813 million total.
The record-breaking run of Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega) and the gang is now $186 million short of $1 billion, and that’s too big a gap for even “The Force Awakens” to overcome in one day. That means the PG-13-rated space opera should cross the global box office milestone on Saturday, its’s eighth day in theaters. That will break the speed record of 13 days that “Jurassic World” needed to reach the mark in June.
“Star Wars” should go through the Christmas Day record of $24.6 million, pinched by “Sherlock Holmes” in 2009, like so much ribbon candy. It set the Friday record last week with its $119 million first day, and Disney and analysts believe that the second weekend of “The Force Awakens” will be in the same range as the first. That would be roughly $190 million, once you subtract the record $57 million that it scored in Thursday night previews from its $248 million opening weekend, also a record.
Original stars Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher return to co-star in “The Force Awakens,” which is set 30 years after the events of 1983’s “Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.” The production budget on “The Force Awakens,” from Abrams’ Bad Robot and Lucasfilm, was $200 million. Bryan Burk and Kathleen Kennedy produced along with Abrams, who shared screenwriting duties with Michael Arndt and Lawrence Kasdan. John Williams composed the score.