Will Star Wars: The Force Awakens Follow Jurassic World Past The Avengers’ Opening Weekend Record?

By Nick Tylwalk | Aug 27, 2015

Poor Avengers. Certainly, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes know that records are made to be broken, and that The Avengers wasn’t going to hold the distinction of having the biggest opening weekend in movie history forever. But after Jurassic World already stomped past its domestic and global marks, is it destined to be surpassed again before the end of 2015?

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As the Magic 8-Ball might say, “Signs point to yes.” See, there’s this little motion picture releasing in December called Star Wars: The Force Awakens. You may have heard something about it. Pretty popular teaser trailers, lightsabers and all that.

Anyway, Deadline has predictions from industry insiders on how The Force Awakens might do right out the gate, and the forecasts are eye-popping: $300 million domestic and $315 internationally for a new record of $615 million worldwide. That’s in a single weekend folks.

For perspective, The Avengers held the domestic opening weekend records for three years at $207.4 million. Jurassic World barely squeezed by it this summer, making it to $208.8 million in its first weekend in theaters. If the forecasts are anywhere close to correct, The Force Awakens won’t just break that record, it will obliterate it, to the tune of almost 45 percent more money in the same amount of time.

Naturally, the naysayers are out in full force in the Deadline comments section, bringing up things like the possibility of bad weather for a holiday release and the fact that the last three Star Wars movies weren’t exactly universally beloved. They did make lots of money though, and the holiday release window offers some unique opportunities that the summer doesn’t. Just ask Titanic and Avatar …

This is going to be fascinating to watch, but with Marvel super hero movies already falling to second through fourth in terms of U.S. opening weekends (as Avengers is followed by its own sequel and Iron Man 3 on the list), it will be a little bittersweet to see them bumped down again so quickly. Russo brothers if you’re reading this, time to step up your game and reclaim the throne with either Civil War or Infinity War.

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