Larry McGillicuddy

I'd "explain it away" by saying we have very little precedent for movies released on this calendar that have made this much money. Of course, I think it's silly that anything needs to be explained away for a film that is going to finish top 5 all time and make $400 million after its opening weekend.

As a longtime lurker around here, I remember the original predictions for TFA and find it quite amusing that people are trying to find faults with how TLJ has performed so far.

A small random sample is better than a large biased sample.

I adjusted the gross on ticket prices, but the budget on CPI inflation.

If you adjust Cutthroat Island, it made $18.1m on a budget of $148m.

Not quite. It would be the highest grossing film of the first weekend in January. Ghost Protocol was #1 on January 1st, but was a 2011 movie. The Devil Inside was #1 on January 6 and thus became the #1 movie in one day.

Cutthroat Island would like to have a word with you.

I'd love to see Friday the 13th (2009) on that chart.

Avatar is not bad, but it has one of the least interesting main characters for a blockbuster ever, and certainly the least interesting of Cameron's career.

Depends if you count films that open on Wednesday or not. TF2 did $36m on its first Friday, which was its 3rd day of release. But if you mean best Friday outside of the opening week, Avatar currently has that with $25mill, so TA should definitely beat that.