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The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug finally opened in Australia on Boxing Day, and promptly took the second-highest Boxing day box office ever to add to the Smaug-like hoard that it’s already amassed globally.<\/p>\n The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug finally opened in Australia on Boxing Day, and promptly took the second-highest Boxing day box office ever to add to the Smaug-like hoard that it’s already amassed globally.<\/p>\n
Peter Jackson has confirmed his position as Lord of the Ringing Tills with The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug recording the second-highest Boxing Day opening in Australian history.<\/p>\n
The only film to have topped the $5.465 million that the second film in his Hobbit trilogy racked up at the Australian box office on Thursday is the first Hobbit film, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which opened with a staggering haul of $5.9 million last year.<\/p>\n
Jackson now holds the top five places on the Boxing Day chart, with his three Lord of the Rings films filling out the next three positions.<\/p>\n
Australian fans were, however, made to wait for their chance to see the New Zealander’s latest J.R.R. Tolkien adaptation. But they’re used to that: his films are typically released here close to a fortnight after they hit cinemas in most other territories of the world, in order to capitalise on the biggest day on the Australian film calendar.
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Jackson has come a long way since his first feature, the ultra-low-budget sci-fi horror comedy Bad Taste. Shot on weekends over four years, with Jackson playing a couple of characters and his close mates the rest, the film cost an estimated $NZ25,000 to shoot (a further $NZ235,000 was stumped up by the New Zealand Film Commission to get it cinema-ready).<\/p>\n