The Movie Pass: Star Wars Weekend

There were no surprises at the top of the weekend box office with Star Wars: The Force Awakens opening to the biggest domestic weekend ever. Even with an impressive return from Universal’s dinosaurs in last summer’s blockbuster Jurassic World, the dino-like numbers fell easy victim to the return of Luke, Leia, and Han.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens opened with $238 million domestically, finishing just higher than the projections suggested. With another $279 million earned internationally, Episode VII pulled in an impressive $517 million worldwide. This was all fueled by a $120.5 million Friday that was also record breaking. In fact, the total records for Star Wars: The Force Awakens surpassed 13, with plenty of IMAX and December records not only being broken, but absolutely shattered.

Records included…

-Biggest domestic debut with $238 million (Previous record: “Jurassic World” with $208.8 million)
-Second-biggest global debut with $517 million (Record holder: “Jurassic World” with $524.9 million)
-Biggest Thursday preview gross with $57 million (Previous record holder: “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2” with $43.5 million)
-First film to post single-day gross over $100 million
-Fastest film to $100 million and $200 million (Previous record holder: “Jurassic World” on both counts)
-Biggest December debut (Previous record: “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” with $84.6 million)
-Highest per-theater average for a wide release with $57,568 (Previous record: “Jurassic World” with $48,855)
-Biggest opening weekend of all time in U.K., Russia, Australia, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Austria, Denmark, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Croatia, Ukraine, Iceland, Serbia and New Zealand
-Biggest Imax debut with $48 million
-Most pre-sales with over $100 million (Previous record: “The Dark Knight Rises” with $25 million)
-Best Friday gross with $120.5 million (Previous record: “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2” with $91.1 million)
-Third best Saturday gross with $68.7 million (Record holders: “Jurassic World” with $69.6 and “Marvel’s The Avengers” with $69.5 million)
-Best opening for a “Star Wars” film (Previous record: “Revenge of the Sith” with $108.4 million)

What a weekend!

Star-Wars-Force-Awakens-5

As discussed on the Nerdcast last week, the new questions become how long does Star Wars remain at #1 and will it break the all-time box office record? I guess we’ll have to wait to find out.

But there were other movies at the theaters this weekend besides Star Wars: The Force Awakens. And yes, some of them made some money (albeit not very much). As expected the Chipmunks’ sequel, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip, earned the number two spot with $14.4 million.  Universal’s Sisters, starring Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, finished third with $13.4 million. This weekend also saw The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 became the sixth 2015 release to cross $250 million domestically with its $5.6 million pull giving it enough to finish fourth. The top five was rounded out by Creed which put another $5 million in the bank.

Next week brings Concussion, Daddy’s Home, Joy, and Pointe Break to theaters on Christmas Day with The Hateful Eight and The Revenant getting limited releases as well. Should be an interesting race for number two, and probably a stronger than normal showing for the holiday weekend.

We’ve talked about the movies that are likely to be in the Oscar’s Best Picture category, but haven’t focused on many of the other category possibilities yet, such as Best Foreign Film. Arthouse Audit is finally pushing out Oscar frontrunner Son of Saul to more theaters domestically in hopes that it can compete with some of the other large films on the market. Theaters are crowded right now, but in order to gain a bit more attention and sprint to the stage for an award Arthouse Audit knows it needs some screens. The movie is stated to be very dark and heavy, so it will be interesting to see how many people take a chance with it during the holiday.

And finally, not to be outdone by any other geekdom, the Deadpool movie twitter account decided to share some love for the holidays by releasing an annotated page from the Deadpool script with the masked mercenary himself marking up the page.

Annotated Deadpool Script

Good times!

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