The Hobbit takes the Aussie box office two weekends running

Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug has topped the Australian box office for the first weekend of the year. The film opened locally on Boxing Day and made $14.4m on its first weekend. That figure more than halved this weekend as the film took just $6.1m. The Desolation of Smaug opened in the US on December 13 and has grossed $654.4m worldwide to date. It was made with an estimated budget of US$250m.

The second highest earner this weekend was Disney’s animated feature Frozen. It made $4.8m and also opened on Boxing Day. Last weekend it grossed $6.05m.

Two Australian films continue to hold a place in the box office top 20. Jonathan Teplitsky’s The Railway Man which also opened on December 26 made $1.02m over the weekend. Distributed by Transmission Films, it played on 120 screens and has made $3.08m to date. The film stars Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth and was made on a reported budget of $26m.