'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' makes $1 billion in record time

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The First Order assembles.

Image: Lucasfilm

It took 12 days for Star Wars: The Force Awakens to bring in a global box office haul of $1 billion.
Mark another record broken, and stolen from fellow 2015 release Jurassic World, which accomplished the same feat in 13 days. Though Jurassic differed, being a summer release that also enjoyed the infusion of cash from the massive Chinese market, where Star Wars has yet to open.

See also: 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' almost had a much more familiar title

To say that Hollywood has never seen a success on the scale of The Force Awakens is an understatement, with the movie's trail of broken records setting the bar so high it's hard to imagine anything in the future — except for, maybe, more Star Wars — reaching such heights.
The J.J. Abrams-directed space adventure nearly tripled the opening weekend box office take of the previous December record-holder, Peter Jackson's first The Hobbit movie. Now it's made second-weekend history, with an estimated $154 million in domestic ticket sales surpassing the $103 million record set by Jurassic World earlier this year. It also nearly doubled the previous Christmas Day record-holder — Sherlock Holmes — with $49 million in tickets sold to the 2009 film's $24 million.
There are plenty of other records that remain to be broken for Star Wars, but the big two — all-time domestic gross and all-time worldwide gross — appear to be in reach. Both records were set by James Cameron's Avatar in 2009, but Star Wars is currently on pace to squash them in record time. Case in point: in two weeks, Star Wars has earned almost as much in the U.S. as Avatar did in six weeks.
The Force Awakens also delivers a record-breaking year to Lucasfilm owner Disney as a whole, with the Christmas Day box office catapulting the Mouse House past $2 billion on the year for the first time in the studio's history. Rising ticket costs always play a role in frequently broken box office records, but Star Wars really does exist on another level.
The future looks mighty bright for its 2016 performance too, with the opening in China set for Jan. 9. The big question that remains: what kind of staying power does The Force Awakens possess?
Two of the longest-held box office records, for most weekends at #1 and most consecutive weekends at #1, belong to E.T. (1982, 16 weeks) and Titanic (1997, 15 weeks), respectively. Can Star Wars break either of those as early-year blockbusters like The Jungle Book and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice look to challenge it? We'll see.
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