New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

In 2009, Avatar debuted under the same configuration of the Friday before Christmas. On Saturday, it fell 5 percent from Friday. Yes, some of that was due to a bit of Thursday box office revenue earned prior to the weekend, but it was only dealing with much smaller numbers. Avatar’s best single day of box office was $28.3 million, yet it ran so efficiently for so long that it wound up with a domestic take of $760.5 million, the standing record. By all reason, Star Wars 7 should have dropped on Saturday.

It did not.

The second day take for the presumptive biggest film of 2015 was $68.3 million. A friend actually suggested a total of approximately this amount, and I legitimately snickered. Ostensibly, it reflects a 43 percent drop from Friday. In reality, when we remove the massive amount of Thursday box office, the film EXPANDED 10 percent. On Sunday, its drop was inevitable as the Sunday before Christmas behaves like this in almost every calendar configuration. A daily take of $60.6 million indicated that it was still running white hot. In fact, that’s the biggest Sunday ever, supplanting the former champion, Jurassic World, by $3.3 million. Get used to that statement. You’re going to hear it a lot in the coming days.

I’ll go ahead and spoil yesterday’s results. The Force Awakens earned $40.1 million, thereby becoming the strongest Monday performer ever. It broke the previous record held by Spider-Man 2 by $12.5 million, effectively scorching the competition. It also now owns the four largest single days of December box office, but that's not the most striking achievement.

Let’s describe what has just transpired in the simplest terms. If you look at a weekly calendar of biggest single days of domestic box office, Star Wars 7 already owns four days. That’s over half the week.

Tomorrow, it’ll claim a fifth day. Wednesday and Thursday will remain as the only record days of box office not held by The Force Awakens. And if you’re a Star Wars GFB, the news is even better. The Thursday record is still held by Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. By the time you read tomorrow’s update, the only other film holding a single day box office record will be…The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. This is when Simpsons fans say that they don’t believe in nothing and sign up for law school.

The final Star Wars note for the day is that the film has already earned $300 million by the time you read this. It ended Monday with $288.1 million in domestic receipts. The primary curiosity about Tuesday will be how well it holds. In 2009, Avatar fell a measly 2 percent while the rest of the top ten increased somewhere between 5 and 17 percent. Nine of those ten films earned $3.2 million or less, meaning that The Force Awakens will earn more on its own tomorrow than the entire top ten did in 2009. And I again remind you that the number one of all-time was in its first five days of release at that point.

If The Force Awakens were a piece of metal you tried to touch, it wouldn’t just burn you. You’d lose the chunk of flesh that pressed against it. The one word of caution I’ll offer is that there was a time when The Dark Knight, The Avengers, and Jurassic World all appeared like they had a strong chance of upending Avatar. It’s held off all comers thus far. Star Wars 7 undeniably has it on the ropes, though.

Learning what happens next will make this a historic Twelve Days of Box Office campaign.

Continued:       1       2