Quigley

Yes it did.

Deadline reports: In Japan, the shows didn’t begin until 6:30PM local, but they beat the previous Friday record-setter, Pirates Of The Caribbean 3, which started its run at 9AM. What record is this? Biggest opening Friday for a Hollywood film?

How does this rank among opening days?

SW7 made as much as JW in its first 3 days OS ($129.5M vs $130M) but less than HP7-P2 ($157.5M). SW7's Friday tallied $56.8M, a small drop from Thursday's $58.6M. It is the third biggest OS Friday, behind HP7-P2's $75M and JW's $60M. Anything could happen from now on. The overseas opening weekend record may well fall but who knows? In the meantime, according to estimates, the preview-free Friday record was beaten by a smidge in NA ($63.5M vs JW's $63.45M). I think it is now clear that the worldwide and domestic opening weekend records will fall. However, SW7's overseas OW could fall slightly short of JW and HP7-P2. UPDATE: The film has also broken the record for speed to $250M worldwide (only 3 days). The closest a film has come to this is HP7-P2 with $248.6M in 3 days.

Similarly to Deathly Hallows - Part 2, the ratio of Thursday night previews to preview-free Friday gross was a bit more than 1 ($63.5M / $57M). For the HP finale, Saturday dropped compared to its preview-free Friday gross. For SW7, I think a slight increase is the most we can expect. Breaking JW's Saturday record is getting less likely. Therefore 120.5 + 65 +55 takes us to a $240M opening. (Not saying this will be the final figure but it is a likely one)

I wonder if it can earn more than Thursday on Friday. JW earned $60M overseas on its first Friday and HP7-P2 made $75M. SW7 opened in some markets on Friday, including Japan, Spain, Indonesia and a lot of Eastern European countries that will add to its gross. Also, the markets that opened Wednesday are expected to increase on Friday compared to Thursday. So it all depends on whether the above can offset the Friday drop in countries that opened on Thursday.

Even at the low end of predictions ($125M), SW7 will still set a record Thursday-preview-free Friday gross with $68M. Jurassic World owns the record with $64M. The question is whether it can break the Saturday and Sunday records set by Jurassic World ($69.6M and $57.2M).

W/o China, it made $900M. That's less than 3x its opening weekend. On its second weekend it dropped >60% and on subsequent weekends up to its 6th wknd, it dropped about 50% on average (if you subtract the China gross). I wrote an analysis that compared Furious 7, Jurassic World and Deathly Hallows - Part 2. It's at the F7 or JW OS thread (can't remember which) but the conclusion was that DH2 was the most front-loaded. Star Wars 7 will inevitably have a higher multiple. Just look at the Hobbit movies. Their multiples weren't exceptional but they were higher than average.

Yeah, I agree. And then after opening weekend HP7-P2 plummeted to the ground. What has SW7 got? About three weeks of holidays.

Even the low end of that is humongous. The largest single day (excluding midnight) is Jurassic World's $69.6M. The Friday gross for SW7 (excluding midnights) would be $73M if the $130M figure turns out to be true. That is insane.

It's the 3rd biggest opening day. How is that not good?

- Biggest opening day of all time in Brazil, Chile, Peru - Biggest Disney opening day of all-time in Czech Republic, Turkey - Biggest December opening day in Mexico, Argentina, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore - IMAX records set in Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Chile The above are all Asia or Latin America or Eastern Europe. Yeah, it's not the biggest opening day of all time in all the territories but it doesn't need to be in order to surpass HP7-P2. These results are big enough to achieve that and there are still loads of countries opening on Friday.

I would also like to point out it has probably achieved the biggest two-day worldwide gross (NA + OS). Previous record was Wed-Thu total of HP7-P2 at $126M. SW7 made $130M.

I think it is safe to say that it's gonna make more than $500M by Sunday. There is very little doubt about that. By tomorrow we will know if Jurassic World's worldwide opening weekend record is going down (along with the domestic and overseas components as well).

More than Thursday night NA gross... It should be a record Thursday for the overseas BO right?

Holy Schmoly...

I think that a key detail are the holidays. If this film was released in the summer, then not breaking records would be worrying. Now I'm not worried because its subsequent drops will be smaller than those of summer blockbusters.

$499.1M total for Inside Out! $500M going down (hopefully - with the holidays approaching) http://www.screendaily.com/box-office/star-wars-the-force-awakens-hits-early-141m-international/5098172.article?blocktitle=LATEST-INTERNATIONAL-BOX-OFFICE-NEWS&contentID=40071

It is a flop only if it is unusual for a film that opened on Wednesday to drop 50% the next day. I'm not sure how many such examples of films exist what their % drop was.

So roughly 50% drop. Is that normal for a Wednesday opener?

I'm confused. Do we have a realistic estimate yet?

These are opening-day records for individual countries. When referring to such records, we only use local currency otherwise there would be no point. Global records and rankings are a different story.

Are these all Fri to Sun?

Could someone post, or post a link to a previous post with, the top opening weekends of all time in Italy?

Overall, it couldn't be more impressive (it could but this was impressive enough). The exchange rate is so sh*t though...