The Biggest Box Office Weekend Of All Time

As widely anticipated, Walt Disney Co.’s DIS Star Wars: The Force Awakens closed the three-day weekend with an impressive total of an estimated $238 million in the United States. This combined with the international total brings the haul to $517 million. Ahead of the news Disney's stock is trading about 1.5 percent higher in premarket trading.

Star Wars shattered many records this weekend. These include the highest U.S. domestic weekend, the largest Imax single day launch ever with $48 million in sales, and highest ticket pre-sales ever with more than $100 million worldwide.

However, Stars Wars fell just short of beating Jurassic World’s world record box office opening of $525 million. As Ben Child of The Guardian wrote, analysts believe that this was due to poor planning in the Chinese market.

“If Abrams’s critically acclaimed film does fail to surpass Jurassic World, studio bosses can point to the fact that the movie does not hit screens in the world’s most populous nation until 9 January. When Jurassic World debuted in June, it arrived on US and Chinese screens over the same weekend in a rare moment of global synchronicity.”

The next big milestone for Star Wars is whether it can beat Jurassic World as the fastest film to reach $1 billion in sales worldwide, with the dinosaur epic doing so in only 14 days. Whether it beats that record or not it is clear that Star Wars will be one of the most successful movie releases of all time.

Disney stock last closed at $107.72.