Star Wars: The Force Awakens Doubles Christmas Day Record With $49.3 Million Box Office

Star Wars: The Force Awakens has officially set another record - or rather, officially blown another record out of the cosmos with the power of a sun.

$49.3 million is the new record for Christmas day, literally doubling the previous record ($24.6 million) held by Sherlock Holmes, which was also an opening day for that film in 2009. The official number was more than nine million dollars higher than even the highest early estimates given yesterday, which put the film around 35-40 million. It's the latest in a series of records, and the latest in a series of outdoing even the already high expectations.

That ups the projection for weekend two of The Force Awakens to $140 million, meaning the movie could hit $530 million after its first ten days (and yes, that's another two records by a mile). The total after Christmas Day is $440 million domestic. While official international numbers for Friday aren't yet available, it looks like the foreign market has stayed almost exactly even with domestic, putting the film at very close to $900 million after Friday, and a nearly guaranteed billion dollars worldwide by close of business this weekend.

As a reminder, this movie came out last week. Most impressive.