Despite only being released two weeks before the end of the year, and with its daily and weekly box office receipts continuing to tally in the millions, Star Wars: The Force Awakens has easily become the biggest film of 2015 in Australia – while it narrowly scraped through to beat Spectre in the UK.
According to data released this week, The Force Awakens sits at the top of the pile in Australia with over $65 million – about $10 million more than its number two rival Furious 7. Jurassic World, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Spectre, Minions, Inside Out, Pitch Perfect 2, the final Hunger Games instalment and Cinderella round out the top ten films of the year.
These films were success stories all over the world, and led a record breaking international tally – some $53 billion in ticket sales. The boost in sales wasn’t just due to a year of blockbuster films, but also to China’s incredible growth, seeing a 49% growth in ticket sales, with some 22 new screens being added to the country every day.
The Force Awakens is yet to open in that territory, and though Star Wars has never been a big seller in that market (the original trilogy only screened there for the first time last year), the unprecedented buzz surrounding the film (they walked 500 Stormtroopers down the Great Wall for starters!) should ensure it pushes the film further into the record books.
Meanwhile, in the UK, Star Wars also scraped through to top the list of highest grossing films of the calendar year – with its incredible £94.06m haul beating Spectre‘s £93.5m, an amount that makes it enough to be the second biggest film in UK’s history. Skyfall sits at the top of the UK all-time list with £103m, though most expect The Force Awakens to beat that in the days ahead.
It’s a similar story in the USA, with The Force Awakens anticipated to topple Avatar from the all-time list this week, having surpassed the US$700 million mark over the weekend – only the second film in history to do so. It sits only US$20 million behind Avatar. Unlike the Australia and the UK, however, the mammoth numbers were not enough to put its short end of year release at the top of the calendar year receipts – Jurassic World maintaining its crown by less than US$300,000.
The film still has a long way to go to beat Avatar‘s all-time international record of US$2.7 billion, but with repeat viewings a given, a tally of US$1.5 billion already (in just 19 days!), and an imminent release in China (Saturday 9th January), it’s certainly looking a plausible outcome.
Though the box office was dominated by big budget Hollywood films, it’s important to also mention that Australian films themselves had a record breaking year in local cinemas. Led by the success of Mad Max Fury Road, The Dressmaker, The Water Diviner, Oddball and Paper Planes – which were, in order, the top five Australian films of 2015 – the year topped every record in the books for Australian film, with the past calendar year record of $63.4 million set in 2001 surpassed back in October.
UK figures from BBC – Some international figures from ft.com – All other figures from Box Office Mojo, in Australian dollars unless otherwise clarified.
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