It will destroy it, 2 billion for sure.

Jurassic Park is number 19 on the billion list and released before both of those movies. And phantom menace is number 20. Four years after that lord of the rings rotk made a billion and is 12 on the list what's your point? That would make lord of the rings a bigger franchise than star wars by your reasoning. But the hobbit didn't shatter records nor did age of ultron top the first avengers movie. Get over it, not everyone likes star wars and that's OK. Also alot of movies tank after first week in sales so preorder tickets prove nothing toward longevity, only that it will have a big first week.

I find myself agreeing with a lot of what you said. Christmas is an excellent time to break records at the box office, due to the weak competition for the next few months. While I don't know how much Star Wars will do at the end of its run, I can see it shattering first and second week(end) records. Preorders for tickets don't denote longevity, and if nothing else those preorders will only guarantee exceptionally high midnight showings and a superb opening weekend. Beyond that, preporders don't mean much.

For a holiday season, you really wanna see what a movie is doing in its first three weeks of release. Titanic and Avatar are great examples of movies with opening weeks that weren't spectacular, but their subsequent weekends saw very small drops each weekend. Another example is Meet the Fockers (I think) where it saw extremely small dips during the holiday season and made a respectable amount with an opening weekend of only around $45-50mil. Star Wars could be front-loaded for all we know, but I'd be interested in seeing what kind of business they're still doing in the second week of January. It's ok for a summer movie to be front-loaded, but a holiday movie needs legs.

If Star Wars can do gangbusters next week and still have legs, well, the sky's the limit and we could have a new highest-grossing film of all time. I for one will just wait 8 months to see it on Netflix because I'm in Canada and our version of Netflix has a deal with Disney in place to receive it in August or so. Not even American Netflix will have it that soon because of how the contract works.

Yeah, JW was a very average movie :S I hope SW7 is good and does better than JW

Also theres a ton of people underestimating Star Wars here o.o

More like a ton of people are overestimating  star wars here. 

In the coming months we'll see who is right and who is wrong.

If a movie like TPM, retroactively seen as shitty and at the time seen as average, can hit a billion dollars while being one of the highest first weeks of all time, I'm sure Star Wars will hit 1.6. There's simply a uniqueness to Star Wars in that they're not just movies, they're events. The only series that's replicated that sort of atmosphere in recent years is, ironically, Disney's Marvel CU. Literally the only challenge stopping it from shattering FW numbers is the fact that it's opening in 3900 theaters rather than the expected record-breaking 4500, and that didn't stop TPM back in the day. As for overall, it's gonna be in theaters probably until late June, since Star Wars averages about 30 weeks in theaters, so I legitimately think it could dominate its way to beating Titanic's first run. Probably not with its second run added in, but you can never really underestimate Star Wars. 

At the time Phantom Menace released, it was the second highest grossing movie of all time. That's with terrible reviews and being by far the worst Star Wars film. Also, feel free to remind us of the last movie that broke presale records and then tanked in the second week.

It's ironic that when the Phantom Menace released, it broke several box office records held by The Lost World, and now the new film will be breaking several records held by Jurassic World. Best part of all this is, we're only gonna need to wait a couple weeks to see the results.

Full disclosure: I strongly dislike Star Wars.

Just remember that Star Wars is a rare example of a film series having its second largest market be Japan and Star Wars has always been a relatively weak international performer especially compared to the likes of James Bond. Even when adjusted for inflation A New Hope and The Phantom Menace are not particularly high when you discount re-releases.

$1,492,410,657.08