CGI Showdown – Will Star Wars: The Force Awakens Outperform Jurassic Park?

Ever since 2012 when it was announced that a new Star Wars film was to be made global excitement has been gradually building. Even die-hard fans who may have been disappointed by the three “prequel” films released between 1999 and 2005 were excited by the prospect of what director JJ Abrams could do to re-energise the series after the franchise had been bought from George Lucas by the Walt Disney Company.

The level of anticipation reached a peak when Guinness World Records announced that the film’s trailer was the most viewed of all time. Excitement and interest had been cranked up even further by the secrecy that’s surrounded every aspect of the film including which of the original characters would appear and the details of the plot.

With Star Wars: The Force Awakens due for a December release, earlier in the year another re-booted series had set the bar very high for a record-breaking opening. Jurassic World, from Comcast, was the fourth in the Jurassic Park series of films, the last one of which had been released 14 years earlier in 2001.

It soon appeared that the cinema-going public’s appetite for blood-thirsty reptiles was still very much with us and Jurassic World broke the world record for an opening weekend going on to earn $39 million dollars in Australia and $1.7 billion worldwide – a very good return on its $150 million production budget by anyone’s standards.

Now some observers believe that the huge success of Jurassic World can only work to Star Wars’ advantage as it will both appeal to a new generation of cinema goers and attract an older audience with a nostalgic interest in the films they enjoyed in the past.

On the other hand, others have urged caution in predicting that it will be the year’s second film to smash all the records. There are a number of reasons for this including the facts that pre-sales of tickets are not always reliable indicators of actual sales and that more films are launched in December, and therefore greater competition, than in the summer when Jurassic World came out.

There’s also sure to be great interest in how Star Wars: The Force Awakens does both from investors in Disney. With Disney supposedly having bought the Star Wars franchise for £4.3 billion it’s vital that they quickly start to earn a good return on their investment.

As to whether Comcast or Disney are going to emerge as the ultimate winners it’s almost too close to call. Star Wars has opened to great reviews but in 2015 Comcast has produced more films to earn $1 billion in a calendar year than any other studio.

So only time will tell whether the Force will prevail.