Can Star Wars: The Force Awakens break all box office records?

How big will Star Wars: The Force Awakens be? Will it obliterate every box office record? Maybe…  The biggest hit of 2015 so far is one of the most successful films ever: Jurassic World. So far it’s taken $652.2m in the US, plus slightly more than $1bn in the rest of the world (including $228m in China and nearly £100m in the UK). In so doing, it relieved Avatar of some of its records.

So here’s your Force Awakens record breaker ready reckoner:

• More than $760.5m needed in the US to topple Avatar as the most successful film ever there
• More than $2.1bn needed internationally to topple Avatar
• More than $2.8bn needed worldwide to topple Avatar
• More than $524.4m needed to beat Jurassic World’s worldwide opening weekend
• More than $208.8m needed in the US to beat Jurassic World’s opening weekend record
• More than $315.6m needed internationally to beat Jurassic World’s opening weekend record
• Jurassic World is the fastest film to every US marker post from $100m to $650m: it crossed $150m in just two days; after 10 days in play, it had passed the $400m barrier; and on its 17^th day on release, it edged over $500m.
• The final instalment of Harry Potter holds the US record for the most successful opening day at $91.1m
• Avatar holds the record for the most successful third, fourth and fifth weekends in the US.
• In the UK, Skyfall holds the all-time box office record of £102.9m, having beaten long-time champion Titanic.

Are there any obstacles to the Force failing to smash all records? Yes! The first and most obvious is: is it any good? If words gets out fast via social media that it’s The Phantom Menace all over again, then its legs will wither in the Western markets very rapidly indeed. The level of pre-sales/advance bookings will almost certainly mean that short term records will be smashed no matter what, but if the film is poorly received by its target audience (the ones who will drive repeat business), then the longer term records become too much.

Also, Star Wars has no legacy in the world’s second largest film market, China. Jurassic World’s total there makes it only the third most successful Hollywood film this year behind Age of Ultron ($240.1m) and Furious 7 ($390.9m). However, go back five years to Avatar’s release in China and James Cameron’s smurf movie made an unprecedented $204m just as the country was expanding its consumption of film.

Reviewing Avatar’s box office performance (Force Awakens has broadly the same release pattern) is instructive. Its ability to smash short-term records was hindered by its duration, namely two hours and 40 minutes, which limited the number of performances per screen per day to three. Force is clocking in at two hours and 15 minutes, so four performances per day per screen should be the minimum achievable. And Force will show on more screens than Avatar.

Key to Avatar’s international performance was the number of countries that it generated more than $100m from: Australia, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Spain and the UK. Furious 7, Jurassic World and Age of Ultron only passed the $100m mark in China!

So, in order to beat Avatar’s financial records, Force will need to beat $100m by a substantial margin in all the major markets.

Will other releases run interference? If Force is not well received, then yes. Opening day and date with it in the US is Alvin and Chipmunks: The Road Chip, which take away families with very young children. Then from Christmas Day, the Oscar hopefuls are unleashed, some in platform release and others in wide release: Tarantino’s Hateful Eight, Inarritu’s Revenant, Will Smith’s Concussion, and David O Russell’s Joy (with Jennifer Lawrence). And there’s also the remake of Point Break. On 15 January, in the run-up to Martin Luther King Jnr Day, Ride Along 2 arrives: the first Ride opened on MLK weekend in 2014 with $41.5m – a repeat performance would ensure that Force would be knocked off the number one spot it should in theory have held since opening on 18 December. And that would mean it would be unable to match Titanic’s 15-week run at number one.

In the UK, Titanic stayed at number one for 13 consecutive weeks. Here, the Force will face ‘opposition’ from the Peanuts Movie (opening 21 December), and that’s about it until 1 January, when the Oscar and BAFTA contenders arrive. Having said that, if the Force is strong, then it should stay at number one in the UK until 12 February (which would mean eight consecutive weekends at the top; no film has managed more than four weeks at the top since Avatar) when a flood of major films are unleashed: Zoolander 2, Point Break, and The Road Chip. If it survives that weekend, it will then face How To Be Single a week later – and that, judging by the trailer, could be another Bridesmaids.

My forecast if the Force is well-liked by its target audience is that it snatches $500m in the US before the end of 2015, and, that being the case, Avatar’s US record could be beaten (but probably not by much). 

Similarly, it should smash UK records with relative ease: $200m from the UK is not out of the question. The Chinese will determine whether Force can make it to $2bn-plus internationally – and Force doesn’t open in China until the end of January 2016.

Some records will not be threatened: in the Western world, not as many people go to the cinema as 50 or more years ago, so the records for the numbers of admissions will not be beaten. The record holder is, of course, Gone With The Wind: 35m admissions in the UK and 200m-plus in the US. If Force generated 200m admissions in the US with an average of ticket price of, say, $8.20, it would generate more than $1.6bn – and that isn’t going to happen!