JJ Abrams' movie has overhauled 'Skyfall' to become the highest-grossing movie in British cinema history, with takings of £108.4 million.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens has broken the all-time box office record held by Bond movie Skyfall, making it the most commercially successful movie ever at UK cinemas.
According to the latest regular BFI report on box office takings ending on Sunday (January 10th), the latest instalment of the intergalactic saga has taken a total of £108.4 million from UK cinemas, in the process smashing the previous high achieved by Skyfall in 2012 of £103 million.
Released less than a month ago on December 17th, the JJ Abrams-directed The Force Awakens headed into 2016 with a total of £97.3 million, making one of the top five highest grossing titles in British film history.
'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' is now the highest grossing movie in British history
Even Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie The Hateful Eight was unable to dislodge the Disney picture from a fourth week at the top, with the winter western taking an impressive £2.7 million in its first week and hitting second spot, with The Force Awakens adding another £6 million.
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In America, The Force Awakens continues to do huge business, with The Hollywood Reporter citing a grand total of $815 million at U.S. box offices as of this week, making it the most successful film ever on both sides of the Atlantic.
Globally, it has now taken in excess of $1.5 billion, with takings from the Chinese market yet to be added to the overall figure, where the movie was released on Friday (January 8th). If it proves successful, it could yet overhaul the two biggest movies worldwide, being James Cameron’s Titanic ($2.18 billion, 1997) and Avatar ($2.78 billion, 2009).
Meanwhile, The Force Awakens’ young star John Boyega has recently given an interview about starting work on the forthcoming eighth movie, set for release in May 2017 and due to be directed by Rian Johnson. “It’s great,” he said about the script and how he’d reacted to it, “Much darker, but we’re [the cast] very excited.”
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