TUESDAY, 9:15 AM and noon writethrus after Monday PM post: Disney’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens is continuing on its phenomenal trajectory as audiences on Monday just added another $31.3M to bring the sci-fi franchise up to a final gross number through yesterday of $571.42M on its way to $600M in the next 48 hours or so. With another holiday weekend on its way — New Year’s Day is Friday — the industry can expect to see the picture hit $700M as soon as this weekend.

The movie, Disney noted this morning, is already the No. 2 film of 2015 (behind only Jurassic World, which grossed $652.27M domestically). It is also climbing the charts and is now the fifth top film of all time. Currently above it — and it’s bound to change after this coming weekend — is Marvel’s The Avengers ($623.3M), Jurassic World, Titanic ($658.6M) and No. 1 Avatar with $760.5M.

Monday’s estimate is only about 28% off of Sunday’s gross and is greater than most pictures make in their opening weekends. The film has pretty much toppled every box office record, most notably reaching $1B worldwide in only 12 days. It has a current international gross through Monday now of $589.6M (having made $39.4M on Monday) — and that is before it releases in China on January 9.