Star Wars: The Force Awakens could be poised to do well in China, the one major film territory where the new episode has not yet opened, according to a new report.

Reuters has analysed social media posts on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, which suggest JJ Abrams’s movie is outpacing this year’s big box office hits in China. The Force Awakens has racked up more than 700,000 mentions since the start of December, compared to 230,000 for China’s biggest foreign import of 2015, Fast & Furious 7, over a similar period.

China is thought to represent the last piece in the jigsaw puzzle required for Disney’s Star Wars to break Avatar’s 2010 world record of $2.78bn (£1.86bn). Some experts believe the new film could make up to $100m in China on its opening weekend, on 9 January. But others suggest that Chinese filmgoers are less versed in the famous film series than viewers elsewhere in the world, as the original Star Wars trilogy was released long before the nation had developed a large cinema-going habit.

In 1977, when George Lucas’s Star Wars ushered in the modern Hollywood box office era, China was just emerging from Chairman Mao’s cultural revolution, and there were few cinemas. The much-maligned prequels, whose style Abrams has deliberately avoided on The Force Awakens, are better known locally.

However, Disney has pulled out all the stops to increase awareness. In October, the studio flew in an army of 500 stormtroopers to line up on the Great Wall of China as giant billboards flashed with the message “The Force Awakens” in Chinese and fans waved red and blue lightsabers. The studio hired pop star Lu Han to introduce trailers, with the singer’s band EXO contributing the single Lightsaber.

Reuters’ analysis offers hope to Disney that the Chinese may embrace Abrams’s film as enthusiastically as the rest of the world when it opens there. The Force Awakens scored the highest global opening of all time last weekend, even without the help of China, the world’s second-largest box office. The film’s $528m haul surpassed Jurassic World’s total of $524.9m from June and has smashed opening weekend records in the US and UK.