"Star Wars: The Force Awakens" has proved to be a real box office hit. After its debut on China on Saturday, according to studio estimates, the movie gained a record breaking of $53 million.
To date, China is the last major market for the "The Force Awakens". It is expected that sales in China will bypass the United Stated in terms of world's top movie market, given that now the Asian country is already the second-biggest source of ticket sales in the world. For this reason, the success of "Star Wars" in China is of critical importance.
Disney Studios have heavily invested in "Star Wars." The company paid in 2012 over $4 billion for rights to the company behind the franchise, Lucasfilm. Disney has plans launch a series of standalone spinoffs, rather than just create a new trilogy of films.
Disney Studios are very encouraged with the response the movie is receiving, according to Disney distribution chief Dave Hollis. "Star Wars" was received particularly well on Imax, with gaining of $8.1 million. This represents more than 15 percent of the movie's gross earnings, as reported online by the website Variety. A blockbuster film makes usually between 10 and 11 percent of the gross revenue, so "The Force Awakens" has indeed realized a strong performance.
"Star Wars" film's performance in China is even more impressive when considering the gap in their pop culture and the fact that that the country doesn't have strong ties to the "Star Wars" franchise.
Internationally, the film gained this weekend another $104.3 million, totaling worldwide an impressive $1.73 billion. Up-to-date, "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" has become the third highest-grossing movie in history, over-passing "Jurassic World's" with its $1.67 billion global gross.
Some fans of the "Star Wars" movies have pointed out that the new release shares many plot lines with the original "Star Wars" film, according to the Independent. Movie director J.J. Abrams responded to complains by explaining that going backwards in some ways was obviously his intention, in order to be able to go forwards in the meaningful ways, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter.
