Sanjay Madhav alerts us to this article from Reuters Newswire service.

The new "Star Wars" movie pulled in millions of fans to North American movie theaters, but it failed to break the weekend record set by "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" two years ago, according to studio estimates issued Sunday.

"Star Wars: Episode 1 -- The Phantom Menace", one of the most widely anticipated movies in history, grossed about $61.8 million for the Friday-to-Sunday period, said its distributor, Twentieth Century Fox.

By contrast, "The Lost World" pulled in about $72 million during the Memorial Day holiday weekend of 1997. But with a tally of $102.7 million since opening last Wednesday, "Phantom Menace" handily eclipsed the "Lost World" five-day record of $98.8 million. It also broke "Lost World's" single day record of $26.1 million when it opened to $28.5 million.

Written and directed by "Star Wars" creator George Lucas, "The Phantom Menace" serves as the first installment of a new trilogy that predates the original "Star Wars" and its two sequels.

Although many critics were somewhat underwhelmed by the exploits of two Jedi knights, their young companions and a gaggle of computer generated characters, die-hard fans gave "Phantom Menace" rave reviews. Many fans had been lined up for weeks, some outfitted as "Star Wars" characters, so that they could be among the first to see the film when it opened at 12:01 a.m. in each North American time zone last Wednesday.

"Star Wars" has always been a world unto itself, so we never try to create a box office record situation," Gordon Radley, president of Lucas' Lucasfilm production company, told Reuters Sunday.

Lucas is currently writing the "Phantom Menace" sequel and will begin production next year ahead of a 2002 release, Radley said. He added that Lucas is currently on vacation with "Lost World" director Steven Spielberg.

"The Phantom Menace", released by Rupert Murdoch's Fox Entertainment Group under a deal with Lucasfilm, played in 2,970 theaters across the United States and Canada on about 5,500 screens. It averaged a stunning $20,819 from each theater, indicating that it played to packed houses.

Tom Sherak, chairman of Fox's domestic film group, cautioned that comparisons between the three-day weekend hauls of "Phantom Menace" and "The Lost World" were a little unfair since the latter played during a holiday. Nonetheless, with all the media hype surrounding it, many box office prognosticators had expected "Phantom Menace" to zap all records.

The press attention given to "Phantom Menace" meant that Fox and Lucasfilm did not have to wage a major advertising campaign since the $115 million movie was already a known quantity.

"Once the media started to run with it, it became a question of when you have 100 percent awareness who do you sell it too?" Sherak told Reuters.

He said that males made up about 59 percent of the audience, based on exit polling done Saturday. The female figure was higher than the studio had expected, he said. Some 94 percent of the audience members surveyed rated the movie as excellent or very good, and 85 percent said they would definitely recommend it.

Industry experts have predicted that "Phantom Menace" will end up with about $1 billion worldwide. The record is held by 1997's "Titanic", which pulled in $1.8 billion thanks in part to repeat attendance by female fans of heartthrob actor Leonardo DiCaprio.