Star Wars: The Force Awakens Breaks Opening Weekend Record With $238 Million Domestic Box Office

As expected, Star Wars: The Force Awakens has broken the opening weekend domestic box office record. In a press release, Walt Disney Studios announced that Star Wars: The Force Awakens made an estimated $238 million at the domestic box office on opening weekend. With a five-day international debut of $279 million, the film has taken in $517 million globally. The previous opening weekend domestic box office record was held by Jurassic World, which opened to $208 million earlier this year.

"Our sole focus has been creating a film that delivers that one-of-a-kind Star Wars experience, and director J.J. Abrams, Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy, and the Lucasfilm team have outdone themselves," said Alan Horn, Chairman, The Walt Disney Studios. "To all of the fans around the world who not only came out in Force to make this such an exciting and astronomical debut but who treated this film as their own and helped preserve the experience for their fellow fans by not spoiling it – thank you, we do."

In addition to the opening weekend record, Disney also listed several other records the film has broken:

· Biggest Thursday preview gross with $57M.

· Biggest Friday and biggest single-day gross with $120.5M.

· First film ever to post a single day over $100M.

· Fastest film to $100M and $200M.

· Biggest December debut (nearly 3 times previous record of $84.6M).

· Biggest IMAX Thursday night preview ($5.7M), single-day ($14M, Friday), and weekend ($30.1M).

· Highest theater average for a wide release ($57,568).

Star Wars: The Force Awakens debuted day-and-date internationally in nearly every market (except Greece and India, which open Dec. 24, and China, which opens Jan. 9) and set records in many. Highlights:

· Biggest opening weekend of all time in UK (4-day), Australia, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Austria, Poland (3-day), Denmark (5-day), Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Croatia, Ukraine, Iceland, Serbia, New Zealand. Second biggest opening weekend in France, Belgium, Israel, Chile.

· Biggest IMAX global debut of $48M.

Check out Comicbook.com's top grossing movies list for the highest grossing movies worldwide.