Weekend box office: Star Wars lifts top 20 over $32m, but not year's biggest

• Star Wars: The Force Awakens pushes weekend total for top 20 to $32m+

The seventh movie in the Star Wars series has set a batch of Australian box office records, but because of its mid-December release, the film hasn't been able to be part of a record weekend for the top 20 movies this year.

The records set by Star Wars: The Force Awakens include:
• A record opening on 941 screens, many more than the 760 screens that The Avengers: Age Of Ultron opened on earlier in 2015.
• The new release had a screen average of $28,964 which very narrowly edges ahead of Fast And Furious 7 which had an opening weekend screen average of $28,838 from its 507 screens in April 2015.
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens has set a new opening day record with $9.4m on its first day last Thursday with screenings commencing at midnight.
• The audiences filling 941 cinemas across the country on the opening weekend totalled $27,254,820, smashing the old record of $18.36m set by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 back in July 2011.

With Stars Wars sucking up so much cash, there was little left for other movies. The total for the top 20 movies for the weekend was $32.92m, meaning the other 19 movies took between them $5.67m.
The rest of the top five was:
#2 Hotel Transylvania 2 $1.28m
#3 The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 $883,164
#4 Spectre $654,699
#5 Dilwale $493,577

A weekend top 20 total of $32.92m makes this past weekend the third biggest of the year so far after $41.55m on the second weekend of January and $40.94 on the first weekend of January. Back then the big earners were The Hobbit and Taken 3, but they had strong support from another seven movies all taking close to $4m or better on those weekends.