The Force awakened, and the sound it made was “cha-ching.” Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the seventh episode of the epic film franchise that began in 1977, was long expected to set box office records, and now that the opening weekend has passed, we can definitively say that it did—and how. The previous record-holder for domestic weekend box office, without adjusting for inflation, was Jurassic World, which took in $208.8 million in its first weekend. By comparison, Star Wars: The Force Awakens raked in a whopping $238 million in its first weekend, and even before the opening, pre-sale tickets totaled more than $100 million.
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