The Walt Disney Company’s DIS much awaited flick – Star Wars: The Force Awakens – has made a great start in the European market, including France, Italy, Sweden and Belgium. Per media reports, the film earned a whopping $14.1 million on its opening day in some of the overseas markets. A new offering from the popular Star Wars franchise is reason enough for movie lovers to go berserk. Disney’s shareholders are naturally enthusiastic about the bright prospects this release holds for the company.
The entertainment world has been a lot of buzz ever since Disney announced Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. It is the first Star Wars movie in a decade. The last release was Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith in 2005. We believe the latest flick will be a fitting end to Disney’s spectacular year at the box-office.
Financial bellwether The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. GS has raised its box-office collection estimates for the movie to $1.95 billion from $1.5 billion. The domestic collection is estimated to be $750 million while the movie is expected to gross $1.2 billion globally. Goldman Sachs forecasts that the company’s fiscal 2016 earnings per share will increase by 2 cents or 0.4% for an increase of every $100 million in box-office sales.
Recently, Variety reported that the seventh episode has already sold more than $100 million in presale tickets. In fact, the film has the potential to surpass Jurassic World’s $208.4 million debut and set a new record.
Based on data provided by movie ticket seller Fandango, Star Wars: The Force Awakens has already crushed all records in advance ticket sales. In the same line, IMAX Corporation announced ticket sales twice that of its earlier record.
However, it is uncertain whether Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be able to break the box-office record of Avatar (2009) – the highest grosser ever with $2.8 billion in worldwide collections. The second Hollywood film to earn more than $2 billion was Titanic (1997). We believe, given the kind of popularity the latest Star Wars film has already enjoyed, it won’t be a surprise if the movie manages to break the records of these two films as well.
Disney, which shares space with Twenty-First Century Fox, Inc. FOXA and Time Warner Inc. TWX, has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
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