With a $34.4 million Friday, Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens not only overtook Jurassic World ($652.2 million) to be 2015’s highest grossing film, but also knocked off Titanic as the No. 2 highest grossing movie of all-time.
Titanic had been the all-time highest grossing movie of all time since its debut in 1997. The James Cameron film would hold that title until Cameron’s 3D sci-fi epic Avatar scorched box office records with a sizzling $760 million.
Titanic was in theaters from Dec. 19 to Sept. 25 and snagged an additional $58 million thanks to a limited 3D run in 2012. Force Awakens has accomplished that and then some in a mere 15 days.
Just as impressive is Force Awakens‘ box office performance compared to Avatar. By Day 15, Avatar made $308 million. Considering 2016 doesn’t kick off with a very strong slate of films, Force Awakens could conceivably be the No. 1 movie at the box office through at least January if not into February.
With only $75 million separating Force Awakens from Avatar’s record, the most intriguing question now is if Force Awakens will be the first film to reach $1 billion domestically. There’s certainly enough weeks to hit that mark with only minimal drops in day to day box office grosses.
Worldwide, Force Awakens is now the No. 7 all-time highest grossing film at $1.36 billion with fellow 2015 films Avengers: Age of Ultron ($1.4 billion) and Furious 7 ($1 billion). Avatar is the record holder on that front as well with $2.78 billion, but that seems likely to fall as well.
Lyles Movie Files 
“Jurassic is number one… Remember that.”
“I’ll crush you like a bug…”
🙂