According to Deadline, as of this past weekend, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey surpassed the worldwide box office take of both The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
BoxOfficeMojo has a complete breakdown of the numbers, but here are the basics:
| Opening Weekend (Domestic) | Domestic Gross (original release) | Worldwide Gross (original release) | |
| The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey | $84,617,303 | $293,559,000 (to date) | $939,859,000 (to date) |
| The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring | $47,211,490 | $313,364,114 | $869,349,688 |
| The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers | $62,007,528 | $339,789,881 | $923,285,627 |
| The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King | $72,629,713 | $377,027,325 | $1,119,110,941 |
You’re probably thinking what I’m thinking. I paid a stupid amount of money to see The Hobbit in 3D IMAX and 3D HFR. Whether or not it was worth it is a story for another day, but those two tickets cost about the same amount of money that I paid for all four trips to Fellowship of the Ring. So no, those figures don’t account for inflation and special ticket prices.
And if you dig deeper into the statistics, you’ll notice other things that aren’t accounted for. For example, on its opening weekend, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey opened in 4,045 cinemas domestically. Compare that with Fellowship of the Rings‘ 3,359 theatres or The Two Towers‘ 3,622. It’s a testament to the Lord of the Rings Trilogy that it did so well at a time when fantasy movies were a gamble.
It’s good to see nerdy films are still alive and kicking. And with two more Hobbit films, along with more superheroes and sci-fi reboots, they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Which is really, really okay with me.
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