Peter Jackson's The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring has done in 13 weeks what took Titanic almost a year - to become the top-grossing movie in New Zealand history.
Over the weekend The Fellowship Of The Ring passed $12,989,000 at the box office to overtake Titanic's $12,967,660, which took 45 weeks to gross locally. Titanic, released in 1997, is still the world's biggest-grossing film at US$1.8 billion ($4.18 billion) when inflation is not taken into account.
Fellowship has so far earned US$768 million ($1.762 billion), making it the seventh-highest-grossing movie of all time.
The film's local gross is equivalent to nearly a third of New Zealand's population having seen it.
However, the high New Zealand box office was possibly because of repeat viewings, said Lisa Hubbard, general manager of Roadshow Film Distributors.
