The latest Star Wars epic last night smashed its way to a box office record, wiping out dinosaurs and aliens as a force to be reckoned with in show business annals.
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace took in $28.5m on its opening day, surpassing the $26.1m single-day record set by the 1997 dinosaur epic Lost World: Jurassic Park, according to 20th Century Fox, which is distributing the film.
The film opened at one minute past midnight on Wednesday in almost 3,000 cinemas across the US. It also set a record for a Wednesday opening, beating Independence Day, an alien invasion film which in 1996 grossed $17.4m for its opening on that day of the week.
"Star Wars is like a thoroughbred horse. You put it on the race track, you know you are going to get a great race out of it. We knew that we were going to do great; we just didn't know how great," said Mr Tom Sherak, chairman of 20th Century Fox's domestic film group.
Tens of thousands of people lined up for hours for the opening.
Despite mixed reviews, fans of director George Lucas's legendary Star Wars trilogy gave Phantom Menace a rave reception at special midnight screenings before audiences dressed up in character costumes.
However, the first-day figures were below some industry expectations and Phantom Menace is not expected to eclipse the worldwide box office record set by Titanic, which was released in 1997. Despite a slow start, Titanic brought in some $1.7bn worldwide.
Some experts had been predicting a $35m box office for the first day of Phantom Menace, although Mr Sherak said such a figure was never in sight.
"We have said from the very beginning not to try to set the picture up for something that is unfair . . . That number was an impossibility."