Star Wars fever expected to grow as film opens in China on Saturday

Global Business

It’s been three weeks since “Star Wars: the Force Awakens” opened in theaters and already it’s achieved phenomenal financial success. So far, the film has made $1.6 billion worldwide, but that doesn’t include the second biggest movie market in the world, China. That’s about to change with the film’s opening in China tomorrow.

CCTV America’s May Lee reports.

Star Wars fever expected to grow as film opens in China on Saturday

It’s been three weeks since Star Wars: the Force Awakens opened in theaters and already it’s achieved phenomenal financial success. So far, the film has made $1.6 billion worldwide, but that doesn’t include the second biggest movie market in the world, China. That’s about to change with the film’s opening in China tomorrow.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is shattering records left and right at lightening speed.

It’s now the highest grossing film of all time in North America surpassing Avatar’s $760.5 million mark, and it took just 20 days. Internationally, the blockbuster has so far earned more than $800 million.

After so much hype leading up to the release of The Force Awakens, the staggering success so far is a huge relief to Disney, which bought Lucasfilms for $4 billion in 2012.

The next frontier for Star Wars is China, where it opens Saturday. Disney’s flashy marketing campaign included an army of 500 stormtroopers on the Great Wall.

It remains to be seen if the efforts will be enough to break Avatar’s 2.8 billion dollar worldwide record, but this revival of the Star Wars franchise is just the beginning for Disney. At least six more films are in the works and the next installment, Rogue One, expected in late 2016, hopes to build on the growing Chinese audience.

“I know for Rogue one, the first stand alone film they are casting a number of Chinese actors, I mean, this is very important to them, Disney is doing their homework here,” Variety film critic Andrew Barker said.