After The Force Awakens went and obliterated every opening weekend box office record, eyes immediately began to turn toward the all-time records. Currently, James Cameron’s Avatar sits atop the domestic box office mountain at $760 million. However, with Force now likely to break $600 million before we even get to the weekend, some are predicting that Star Wars may be celebrating the New Year’s weekend as the top grossing movie in American history.
The movie did over $30 million dollars on Monday, putting it at over $571 million in total for the US domestic box office. This means it could become only the fifth film in America to break the $600 million mark, and that could happen as early as the end of today. At that pace, and with the holiday weekend coming up, the odds of surpassing Avatar once the weekend take is tabulated are incredibly high. What’s more, as this will only be the movie’s third weekend, it likely still has plenty of business left to do.
Even if business slows enough that it doesn’t quite get there this weekend, it seems to be a forgone conclusion that Star Wars will get there. It’s a question of when, no longer if. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the movie also gained another $39 million internationally, which allowed it to jump into the top 10 movies of all time internationally. It still has a long way to go to overtake Avatar on that list, but with business in China yet to even begin, it has a good chance of making a run at that record, as well.
What’s more, there doesn’t appear to be much coming out in the near future that is likely to slow down the juggernaut. Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight opens in wide release on Friday which may draw some moviegoers away from seeing The Force Awakens again, but January is traditionally a slow time in the cinema, which means the competition is light. People have already shown an interest in seeing the film multiple times. Now the question may become, how many times are people actually willing to see it?
James Cameron has said that he wants to prove that the success of Avatar was not a fluke. He’ll have a chance to do that when the sequel is released in a couple of years. Of course then he’ll be truly competing with Star Wars as both Avatar 2 and Episode VIII will be hitting theaters in 2017.
Will you be helping The Force Awakens increase its box office take this weekend? Have you seen it multiple times, or are you just getting around to finding a seat?
