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Lord of the box office
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December 20, 2001: 4:59 p.m. ET
'Lord of the Rings' sets one-day box office record with Wednesday release.
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NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - New Line Cinema's "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" broke out of the gate with a record for single-day December box office of $18.2 million in the United States and $11.5 million in 13 overseas markets.
The movie is the first of three movies based on the classic J.R.R. Tolkien novels. The next two movies are set for release in 2002 and 2003. The movie not only set the record for U.S. box office for one day in December, it broke box office records in Belgium, Norway, South Africa and Sweden, according to New Line.
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Ian McKellen as Gandalf the Grey in Lord of the Rings, which set a box office record with its release Wednesday. | |
New Line is a unit of AOL Time Warner Inc. (AOL: Research, Estimates), which also owns CNN/Money.
The studio took the gamble of filming all three films before the release of the first, at a cost approaching $300 million. It also went with an unusual Wednesday release date for the movie, rather than a typical Friday release, and scheduled the release less than five weeks after another AOL studio, Warner Brothers, released its own fantasy blockbuster, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."
Harry Potter set a record with a $90.3 million U.S. box office in its opening weekend, and has grossed an estimated $253.3 million through this past weekend, putting it in position to pass the $267.7 million U.S. take by DreamWorks SKG's "Shrek" to be the year's top-grossing film.
Lord of the Rings beat out Harry Potter in one other way. It garnered four Golden Globe nominations - for best motion picture drama, best director, best original score and best original song, while Harry Potter received no nominations. Those nominations were announced Thursday.
Shares of AOL lost 25 cents to $32.78 in trading Thursday. 
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