Early Estimates Suggest Star Wars: The Force Awakens Could Make $2.2 Billion at the Global Box Office

"As expectations begin to ramp/get framed for 'Star Wars' we look at how to benchmark the film compared to 'Avatar' and some of the other recent global blockbusters," said the analysts. "In aggregate, we believe that the film can gross around $2.2bn globally."

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is widely expected to be one of the biggest box office stories of the decade so far, but with Jurassic World recently cruising past the $1.5 Billion mark at the global box office, JJ Abrams' movie has some lofty competition for the title of 2015's biggest movie. Now, more than four months ahead of the movie's release, Wall St. analysts have suggested that Star Wars: The Force Awakens won't just be the biggest movie of the year, but it could also become one of the biggest movies of all time.According to analysts at Stifel Nicolaus, Star Wars: The Force Awakens will likely eclipse the figure taken by Jurassic World, taking around $2.2 Billion at the global box office, a figure that would place it behind only James Cameron's Avatar ($2.7B) in the all-time charts.While these are just estimates, it's certainly hard to argue against the idea that JJ Abrams movie could go on to be one of the biggest of all time. Just look at what happened when they released the trailer. Thousands of fans camped overnight in Anaheim's Convention Center to see the trailer on the big screen at Star Wars Celebration, while fans elsewhere helped to make it the most-viewed trailer in YouTube's history, racking up over 88 million views in its first 24 hours.And if those staggering numbers aren't enough to convince you that we've got a box-office behemoth on our hands, the overwhelmingly positive reaction to everything that has come out of the production so far should be. During the screening of the second trailer at Star Wars Celebration, we witnessed grown men weeping tears of joy and thousands of people raving about how good they felt about the movie's prospects. There is a level of excitement around the Star Wars franchise that hasn't been seen since the days of the original trilogy, and as Avengers: Age of Ultron discovered earlier this year, word of mouth is a big influencer in box office performance.Another key factor to The Force Awakens' success at the box office will be its ability to push people towards premium formats such as 3D and IMAX. JJ Abrams has been a big advocate of the 70MM format, and if his movie is going to topple the likes of Titanic and Jurassic World at the top of the box office charts, he's going to have to hope Star Wars fans share his passion.Abrams has already revealed that one entire sequence of the movie would be shot in 70MM, but yesterday a report circulated providing some insight into what that sequence may entail . As the image above shows, an IMAX screening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens may well be worth the extra cash.