STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS Beats AVATAR in ‘Murika – WOOO!

Excuse the rather juvenile headline, but this news is quite exciting.

On the whole, box office news is fairly boring; once in a while, however, a movie comes along which engages you completely in its box office domination or failure – e.g. Fantastic Four. Another such movie is The Force Awakens, which has broken record after record ever since landing in theaters towards the end of last year (if you’re interested in a complete list, then Deadline put one up earlier – it’s quite hefty).

The big question surrounding this movie ever since its announcement in 2012 has been how it will compete with Avatar; will it dethrone it domestically, globally, or both? Or will it remain a $2.7bn-sized ruler of the box office? At least the answer to one of those questions has finally come. The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that the return to a galaxy far, far away will pass James Cameron’s sci-fi flick at the North American box office today, which made $760m over the course of its seven-month release back in 2009/2010 (there was a re-release – remember?).

The Force Awakens has utterly flattened that record, achieving $758m in just twenty days of release. I mean, that’s fucking incredible.

If you look real close, you can see Na’vi being burned in those baskets.

If you’re a Star Wars nut (and, let’s face it, if you’re on this site then you probably are) then this should be fantastic news; achieving over $700m domestically is a feat that’s only been accomplished by these two movies, and there aren’t very many upcoming movies which have a chance of passing that. Some analysts have even been saying the film could breach $1bn domestically, which would be incredibly hard to beat.

But will it overtake Avatar to become the biggest movie ever? It’s hard to say. Given how much of a massive success it’s been it wouldn’t be surprising, however it’s still got over $1bn left to make before it reaches that mark. The site notes that some analysts believe the final gross will be around $2.2-2.4bn, which is entirely feasible. Then again, it’s been out for less than a month, and it’s already the fourth-biggest movie of all time, so…

…lots of money for Disney!

You can check out The Force Awakens in theaters now – if you haven’t done so already then we’re not entirely sure why. Alternatively, you can take a gander at all the fantastic Star Wars content UTF has been churning out recently. Who doesn’t love a good plug?