Despite only being in cinemas for one full day, the new Star Wars movie is already breaking box office records left, right and center.
in the U.S., the movie opened on the evening Thursday 17th and managed to rake in $57 million, ploughing past previous record holder Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part 2's first-evening preview sales of $43.5 million.
IMAX screenings for the day totaled out at $5.7 million, almost doubling the previous record.
On this side of the Atlantic, where the movie opened at 12.01am Wednesday night/Thursday morning, the combined UK & Ireland box office amounted to €14.3 million (£9.6 million), which is another record breaking amount for a single day of ticket sales.
The film opened in 44 other international markets, adding another $72.7 in those first two days from those territories.
Predictions claim that the movie will surpass Jurassic World's current record of $208.4 million for it's opening US weekend, and $524 million worldwide opening weekend.
Goldman Sachs analyst entertainment analyst Drew Borst’s is forecasting that the $200 million budgeted film (without promotional costs) will make $1.95 billion in global ticket sales (which would place it third all time behind Avatar and Titanic) and $6 billion in merchandise sales next year.
Considering that Disney purchased the rights to the movie when they bought LucasFilm from George Lucas for $4.05 billion and will likely double their investment with just one movie, its safe to say that it was a wise purchase.
