You Could Buy A Castle, A Trip To Space & The Real Han Solo With Star Wars’ $517M Box Office Take

If you enjoy fun, popular culture, or things that go boom, there’s a pretty good chance you saw the most recent Star Wars film sometime between Thursday night and Sunday night. Tens of millions of people did, anyway, and as a result the movie has shattered nearly all the opening weekend box office records there are.

The Force Awakens brought in an absolute record-smashing $517 million in its opening weekend alone, according to tracking site Box Office Mojo. Granted, that’s the global tally, but it still brought in $238 million here in the United States — and when it comes to worldwide numbers, well, it doesn’t even hit China, one of the world’s biggest movie markets, until January.

The record-setter for domestic box-office takings is still 2009’s Avatar, which netted about $760 million here at home — and over $2.7 billion globally — before sliding out of theaters. But we could play the movie comparison game (which countries count? what about inflation? what about franchises?) all day and emerge none the wiser.

A better question is: what is $517 million actually worth? If you, like the Walt Disney company, had it pouring into your pockets right now, what could it buy you?

• This Lego made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs: The Lego Millennium Falcon (Episode VII edition) runs $150. You could get 3.4 million of them. (The actual Falcon, alas, would run closer to $5 billion.)
• A giant Tesla fleet: A tricked out Tesla Model S P85D car, cash, including the destination fees, costs $129,700. You could buy 3,986 of them.
• A modern-day castle: The most expensive house ever built is currently under construction near Bel-Air, and the builder plans to sell it for $500 million. Fresh Prince not included.
• An actual castle: Or at least, every one that’s available. Enya’s, in Ireland, cost a little over $4 million. And according to 2013 listings in the Telegraph, there are at least a dozen to be had for under $5 million each.
• Han Solo himself: According to the rumor mill, Harrison Ford was paid a salary of nearly $25 million, plus a slice of the takings, to appear in The Force Awakens. (The movie cost more than $200 million to make, in total.) For $500M, you could probably get at least a few hours of his time.
• A bigger boat: The U.S. Navy’s newest ship-in-progress, a Montford Point-class “Expeditionary Mobile Base,” has a price tag of $500 million.
• An actual, literal trip to space: Before NASA’s space shuttle program ended, a launch cost about $450 million per mission. You’d have enough left over for a couple of Falcon 9 launches from SpaceX, which as of 2012 were running about $57 million each.
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  by Kate Cox via Consumerist