'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' Box Office Surpasses 'Titanic', And 'Avatar' Is Next To Go Down
Even if you've only been paying intermittent attention to the Star Wars: The Force Awakens box office performance, you know the movie has been doing some insane businesses, breaking records all over and crossing milestones faster than any film before it. And as of the end of New Year's Day, the film had just taken down two more of the all time highest domestic grossing titles.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens has now pulled in about $687 million at the domestic box office, taking it past both Jurassic World in the #3 spot, and the once long-reigning champion Titanic at #2. And with all this happening after just 15 days, it's clear that James Cameron's Avatar is next.Deadline has the early figures for the holiday box office so far, which has the film taking in $35 million on New Year's Day alone. And according to projections that have The Force Awakens raking in somewhere between $744.8 – $746 million by the end of the weekend, it looks like the Star Wars sequel will pass Avatar's domestic record of $760.5 million by Monday. And since this is just after 15 days, who knows when this box office behemoth is going to stop.
Meanwhile, internationally, the film is also still doing really well, having pulled in $704/2 million for a worldwide total of $1.39 billion. That has it sitting in the #7 spot on the all-time worldwide box office list behind The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Furious 7, The Avengers, Jurassic World, Titanic and Avatar.
The Force Awakens should have no problem taking on every single one of those movies, with the exception of the top two. Titanic has a worldwide box office gross of $2.186 billion while Avatar has $2.788 billion. Therefore, in order to take the top spot, The Force Awakens needs to pull in nearly another billion and a half dollars. At the rate the film is making money, that doesn't sound too difficult, but only time will tell. The good news is that the film hasn't opened in China yet, but as we've pointed out, there's not a huge audience there, so it may not add a lot to the money pile.
What I'm wondering is if Star Wars: Episode VIII will measure up to this kind of box office success. There are probably some fans who saw this movie, hoped for the best and were disappointed, perhaps not interested in seeing what happens next. But it seems like a majority of them really enjoyed the movie and have been seeing it multiple times. Will the same thing happen with the next chapter? It's certainly possible, but I'm not sure that this kind of box office success will be seen with every new Star Wars film that comes out each year.
Do you think The Force Awakens has the legs to beat Avatar's worldwide numbers?