'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' Rule Box Office: Film Garners 140 Million Facebook Interactions!
The "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" debut over the weekend in North America brought in approximately $248 million and $517 million worldwide, becoming the biggest opening in box office history, according to CNN Money.
The film beat out a record held by Universal's "Jurassic World," which made $208.8 million during its opening weekend and $525 million globally in June. "The Force Awakens" has yet to open on Jan. 9 in the world's second largest film market, China.
Trailers released for months were carefully planned, nostalgia boosted interest and intrigue was created by keeping the film's plot a secret. Disney purchased Lucasfilms, the producer of "Star Wars" in 2012 for $4 billion and spent $200 million to make "The Force Awakens."
"I don't think ever in the history of movies has their been more hype leading up to release of a film," said Jeff Bock, senior box office analyst at Exhibitor Relations Co. about "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." "This is a huge, huge win."
The movie now holds the biggest Thursday night opening, biggest December debut, biggest opening weekend of all time and biggest one day gross, box office records.
Meanwhile, newly released data from Facebook shows that "The Force Awakens" is also one of the most talked about films of all time. 64 million users globally had 140 million interactions on Facebook. This includes shares, likes and comments, revealed Deadline.
The conversation about the film's opening weekend was dominated by Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia.
The film reached 85.5 million Facebook users, 1 million YouTube subscribers, 574 million YouTube views and 5.7 million Twitter followers, bringing it to a total of 667 million people reached through social media.
Disney now plans to incorporate spaceships, droids and other creatures invented by Lucas at theme parks in the United States and release four "Star Wars" movies through 2019, shared Reuters.
To supplement the news about the box office, "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" opened in 4,134 theaters and is the seventh installment of the legendary science-fiction franchise and was created in 1977 by George Lucas.
