Star Wars: The Force Awakens is an American epic space opera film which released on December 14, 2015. The film is the seventh installment in the Star Wars film series and it is directed by J.J. Abrams. Since its release, the film has broken the box office collection record of James Cameron directed Titanic and is closing in on the record of another James Cameron biggie- Avatar.
Titanic, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in the lead role which was released in 1997made a total collection of $658 million at the US box office. The epic romantic disaster film has several Oscars to its name that includes an Oscar in the Best Picture category.
The box office collection record of Titanic was overthrown by Star Wars: The Force Awakens as it had alreadymade $686 million in US ticket sales as of Friday. It has also made $679.2 million in the international box office.
It has also surpassed the records of Jurassic World to become the highest box office grosser in the US in 2015. Jurassic World had previously made $652 million at the US box office. Force Awakens has raked in a total of $1.7 billion worldwide which places it on the no. 7 position on the list of best-selling films in history.
Force Awakens has become the fastest movie in the history to hit the $1 billion mark, which it did in just 12 days after it was released globally. The popularity of the movie could be guessed from the fact that on a single day it raked in $22.9 million in North America.
It went on to become the fourth biggest movie of 2015 and with just a $100 million shy of the box office earnings of Avatar, Force Awakens is set to become the highest earning domestic movie of all time in the near future. This record is currently being held by Avatar with $760 million in ticket sales in US.
George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars was forced to issue a public apology after some comments made by him created a state of unrest among a lot of people. In an interview with Charlie Rose, he was asked to make some statements on Star Wars: The Force Awakens which had released at an earlier date. The interview took place on 25th December, just two weeks after Force Awakens zoomed into the big screens.
Lucasfilm, the production company owned by George Lucas was sold by the man to Disney for $4.05 billion back in 2012. He expressed his disappointment at not being involved in the making of Force Awakens.
He complained that the director of the movie J.J. Abrams has paid no attention to the ideas regarding the movie which were presented by Lucas. Rather than staying true to the actual creation of Lucas, the filmmakers were more focused on creating a retro movie which would become popular among fans.
He referred to the Star Wars films as his kids and expressed his deep love for his creations. He then said that his selling of Lucas film to Disney was like selling his own children to “white slavers”.
It is not hard to guess that he referred to Disney as the “white slavers” in his statement. After the interview became public, he started receiving a lot of backlash from critics which forced him to make another statement on the issue and offer a formal apology alongside it.
In the new statement he clarified that the interview was meant for Kennedy Center Honors and it was taken before Star Wars: The Force Awakens premiered. He referred to the part of “white slavers” and said that it was misspoken by him and he wanted to apologize for it.