Jurassic World set a world box-office record over the weekend, with a large boost from China, where moviegoers spent more than $100 million to watch the latest installment in the dinosaur adventure series.

The film opened in China on June 10, two days before it debuted in the US.

Jurassic World grossed $511.8 million in its opening weekend, the first time that a film had generated more than $500 million worldwide in a single weekend.

The American film, distributed by Universal Pictures and directed by Colin Trevorrow, is the fourth in the series, which started in 1993 with Jurassic Park.

Steven Spielberg, director of the first two Jurassic Park films, is executive producer of Jurassic World. Chris Pratt, propelled to leading man status after his performance in Guardians of Galaxy, stars in Jurassic World, which had a $150 million budget.

"That market (China) likes sci-fi movies; that's a big part of it," Phil Contrino, chief box office analyst at BoxOffice.com, told the Hollywood Reporter. "You look at some recent hits there like Transformers and Interstellar... and there's a big response there."

The $100.8 million taken in on the opening weekend in China is the third-highest box office there ever, behind car-action film Furious 7 ($182.4 million) and Avengers: Age of Ultron ($155.7 million), a comic-superhero film.

The Chinese movie market saw $29.6 billion in ticket sales last year, a 32 percent increase over the past two years, faster than the 6 percent growth in the rest of the world. The box office in China is expected to pass $40 billion by 2015.

According to a Chinese film industry report, 18 new movie screens are added daily in China.

At the end of 2014, China had 23,600 screens (the US has about 39,600).

Jurassic World made $208.8 million in North America in three days. In comparison, Jurassic World's box office in United Kingdom and Ireland was $29.6 million, followed by Mexico ($16.2 million), South Korea ($14.4 million), France ($12.5 million), Australia ($12.1 million), Germany ($11 million) and Russia ($9.4 million).

Hong Xiao in New York contributed to this story