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December 22, 2003
Return Of The King Opens At No. 1
By Gil Kaufman (MTV.com)
Surprising no one, the third installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Return of the King, debuted at No. 1 over the weekend in the States, with a take of $73.6 million, according to studio estimates.
Since its debut on Wednesday, the lauded finale to Peter Jackson's epic telling of J.R.R. Tolkien's sword-and-sorcery fantasy took in more than $125.1 million, beating the opening of the series' second installment, The Two Towers, by nearly 25 percent.
The five-day numbers smashed the previous record haul of $105 million by 1999's Star Wars Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace, though its weekend numbers placed it as only the third-best weekend opening of the year, trailing The Matrix Reloaded at $91.8 million and X2: X-Men United at $85.6 million.
While The Return of the King did not have the biggest opening weekend in domestic history, it did set a record for a worldwide debut. In the movie industry's latest bragging-rights category, Frodo and friends snagged $246.1 million in 28 countries, beating the worldwide five-day best set by The Matrix Revolutions ($202.8 million) in November. And experts predict that The Return of the King could become only the second movie ever to top the $1 billion mark worldwide, following in the footsteps of Titanic, which took in $1.8 billion.