Star Wars Pulls In $1 Billion At Record Speed (reuters.com)

New submitter henrydan798 writes to note that Star Wars: The Force Awakens has set a new record for ticket sales, becoming the fastest movie ever to earn a billion dollars at the till. As the L.A. Times reports, The latest installment in the "Star Wars" franchise grossed an estimated $153.5 million in the U.S. and Canada in its second weekend, beating the lower end of analyst expectations of $140 million. This drives the J.J. Abrams-directed picture to a to-date domestic gross of $544.5 million. "The Force Awakens," which cost an estimated $200 million to produce, debuted last weekend to record domestic ticket sales of $248 million. It also grossed $281 million overseas for a global total of $529 million, topping the previous worldwide debut benchmark set in June by "Jurassic World" ($525 million). This week, with an international estimated gross of $546 million to date, the film became the fastest to surpass $1 billion globally. Were any of those dollars yours? If so, do you think they were well spent?

Comments

Not my money, yet

[ffkom]

Congratulations on the successful marketing! And still, I'm in no rush to see this movie. I'll wait until I can rent a BluRay in my local video store, to watch it at home, where already for significant time the image and audio quality is more pleasant than in most public theaters, not to mention the comfort of having control over volume, play/pause etc., and the absent mob of other people.

Re:Not my money, yet

[Maxo-Texas]

The best way I can find to explain how I felt after thinking about the film was that it has been "autotuned".

It feels right and great (at least the first half) while you are in the theatre.

But it doesn't feel right later when you start thinking about it.

Some people will be satisfied with the feeling of the first half and not too bothered by the retread of a retread of a retread of a second half but unless the next film is better this is not going to be very rewatchable.

You don't want to see it as I saw it- through less than new 3-d glasses which had a kind of haze around the edge near the frame that couldn't be cleaned with waiters walking back and forth in front of you-- stopping twice to tell us the bar was closing soon.

I started to feel like "Get the "F" off of me and out of my view-line!"

Bottom line is- I feel this movie is a designed corporate film where young people who lack experience and training beat people with years of experience and training ( Sounds like Star Trek already right?) and it tosses out 30 years of canon and 50% reboots the series.

only for the nostalgia

[Anonymous Coward]

The new film was (a) far better than the train wreck of the prior three, (b) essentially identical to the first (1977) Star Wars plot, (c) decently acted, and (d) a mediocre movie, but one that felt better than it really was in comparison to the horrors of the prequels. It worked on a nostalgic level: it felt like the Star Wars universe again, and it didn't totally fuck it up. It didn't so well work on the level of being original or even fully making sense within its own universe.

Mixed bag. Not as horrible as the naysayers claim, but not as awesomely great as the fanboys claim.

Not shocking but mildly disappointing

[quantaman]

Mild spoiler warning.

Of course it made a billion dollars, it's a decent Star Wars movie. They could have made a great Star Wars movie if they didn't just remake A New Hope. Of course that would also risk a bomb that would kill ticket sales for the further installments.

Better to shoot for mediocrity and guarantee billions than to shoot for greatness and risk the cash cow. Hopefully the next non-Abrams director will be willing to make a new movie.

Ouch!

[Evtim]

Don't want to sound....whatever.....put any qualifier that comes to mind here....but I am done with cinema going in general and Star Wars in particular!!

I see now that the whole idea of what movie and movie going is, has changed. It is a much larger "consumer experience" that involves merchandizing, social media, a plethora of buttons being pushed cleverly on kids and their parents, social engineering, social media, stiffing political correctness.......and the quality of the actual film is not significant anymore! It is a product, not a movie!

The actual movie [only a part of the product]....ouch! Let's not bother repeating the obvious - just go to IMDB and read the top 50 "non-professional" reviews. 47 are negative and the points why TFA sucks tremendously are explained eloquently and in detail. The official reviews are an insult to our intelligence....my the gods even the guy who [hilariously] destroyed Ep 1-3 (red letter media) is buying the crap...I cannot continue...only curses come to mind :(

But man, the product worked like a charm! I watched it on 25th at 11:00 AM in the one of the only two places in NL where you get the 3D IMAX stuff. I had the best seat in the whole theater and was prepared to love the film. I did Ep.4-6 marathon the previous day, brushed my figures (R2D2, Imperial walkers) and posters - we are talking about a boy who saw the originals at age of 7 - a life time devoted fan!

Every family took a picture of their kids next to the model of BB-8! Merchandizing was everywhere....Every family kept on taking pictures inside the theater and sharing them in the last few minutes before the show. The cinema cleverly had a gallery of images form the trailers flashing on the screen starting from 10 minutes before 11. Guess what - everyone took a snapshot the moment they appeared like they'd been force mind tricked - I am sure that was the intention of showing the images. I honestly felt alien, like being surrounded by a herd of strange animals and you are not sure what they'd do next...

The show started at 11:00. Sorry , wrong, wrong , wrong....there were ....wait for it....25 minutes of ads of which only 3 for movies the rest was beer, the cinema chain, Coca Cola.....I got crazy!!! You pay premium for this and they give you half an hour of ads!!! Also - politically correct BS as beer ad that says to drink responsibly and that women do not like drunken men (fuck you, you are a beer manufacturer!).

And then the show starts and I realize that I cannot bare the loudness of the sound. Surely I am partially to blame - for some inexplicable reason my hearing has grown more acute in the last year or so (go figure!) but still I am sure it was already at the the very edge of what is tolerable...I though why are not the parents worried about the kid's ears?!? So I watched the show with my in-ear headphones plugged in and the sound was just loud enough (no kidding).

Shame on JJ, shame on the official reviewers for buying this (hey, Empire magazine, do you remember your wall of shame, giving Attack of the clones 5/5 (WTF!!) - you are about to repeat that if you are not honest), shame on the whole industry for turning movie going into this....I don't know what this is..., shame on all of us for still supporting this, shame , shame, shame...

I am so sorry that one of my most precious dreams is being destroyed....the kid from the former communist state walking with his father in the streets of Sofia in 1980 (that's the delay you got back then) and we see a poster with stormtrooper firing the rifle and the title Star Wars. My father goes "this seems like a movie in space, you like this kind of things, what with reading Jules Verne and such...shall we try" [no ads back then, no reviews - you go "blind" to a movie unless someone has seen it and tells you]. ....we watched it sitting on the stairs between the rows - there were no chairs left. We went out and I said "again"...and we went on the other side of the cinema to join the line for the next performance...RIP!

The social engeneering

[Evtim]

Forgot to expand that part....so the message to the new generation is that if you are born proper (jedi) no training or effort is needed to master anything. The girl in the movie did not require any mentoring and in a few hours learned how to beat a Sith and knew better the Millennium Falcon than Han Solo! This drivel is a very poor and damaging attempt of PC girl-power shit. Listen, idiots, the female lead of all time and space is Ellen Ripley! We have done it many years ago, why is everyone hailing TFA for it?! Breaking such major Star Wars universe rule [you need to learn to use the Force and light-sabres] for the sake of PC points (but also financially rewarding, get it;) is...cynical to the extreme.

And I thought Lucas went senile with the whole "Han shot first" stuff...telling the kids that they should let hired assassin kill them for the sake of not appearing...what...bad?!? Who in their right mind would blame someone in this situation for taking a chance at Greedo?!

JJ outdid all this easily...I have the nagging feeling that a large group of marketeers was set to work and they scrambled "action points" - stuff that needs to be in to please this group or the other. At the end all the points were ushered in the script and the plot was twisted to accommodate them regardless of what it did to consistency with the SW universe rules...give it to bean counters to make...well...anything and watch the world burn!

Not a movie

[vikingpower]

Star Wars is not a movie anymore. It is a heavily marketed brand. It can't even qualify for the label "science fiction", compared to the truly good SF movies around. Heck, Interstellar is a lot better than that, even with the hole(s) in the plot and the "Amurrica yeah!" spirit. I mean - I'm an adult. You'd literally have to drag me to a Star Wars movie, kicking and screaming.

Re:Rollercoaster

[MrKaos]

Your money is gone

Speak for yourself.

I am. I didn't have any expectations and I had a great time. You guys are all the same you know, when something new comes out you ignore it because it's unfamiliar and when you get what you ask for you complain because it is.

You just can't sit back and enjoy it for what it is.

Wait, what?

[SuricouRaven]

I thought piracy was supposed to be killing the creative industries?