Star Wars The Force Awakens heading towards historic box office records

After smashing the advance ticket sales record, Star Wars The Force Awakens is set to create new box office history. The JJ Abrams directed movie has already broken the opening night record in the US and Canada.

The space opera produced by Disney/Lucasfilms has earned $57m (£38m) on its opening night, easily beating Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2 that earned $43.5m in 2011.

Deadline reports that the movie's opening weekend collection will exceed $251m to $255m in the US. The estimation was derived after calculating the midnight ticket sales from the east and west coast of the country.

According to a report by Variety, Disney has claimed that the seventh instalment of the space thriller has earned $72.7m in two days from 44 international markets while creating single day collection records in the UK, Germany, Sweden and Norway.

The movie has earned £9.64m in the UK and Ireland, setting a new opening day box office record, a report by BBC claims.

"Already breaking pre-release sale records, many people are speculating that Stars Wars: The Force Awakens may well challenge Avatar for the highest grossing movie of all time title," Connor Campbell, a senior market analyst at Spreadex told IBTimes UK.

"At the very least the latest film in the sci-fi series should see Disney, set to benefit in the New Year when the film's revenue is factored into the company's next quarterly report, recoup a significant chunk of the $4 billion it paid George Lucas for the rights to the saga. Disney may well see a boost as early as next week, when the film's first weekend figures are announced," he added.

Industry pundits previously predicted that The Force Awakens has the potential to become the greatest movie of all time in terms of earnings.

"This represents a new record for the industry and portends a massive and potentially record-breaking opening day and weekend for the film," Paul Dergarabedian, of box office tracker Rentrak told Rappler. "The potential for The Force Awakens to ultimately break into the $2 billion club worldwide is certainly in the realm of possibility," he added.

Disney, however, remains cautious while predicting the movie collection and is estimating $200m earnings over the weekend.

Star Wars 7 begins 30 years after the events of The Return Of Jedi and introduces new characters to carry forward the story of the Force, the Jedi and Empire.