Ice Age: The Meltdown scored the best ever opening in Argentina with 544,158 admissions from 155 screens in its first four-day weekend (March 30-April 2).

The animated sequel beat the previous record set by The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with 460,489 admissions from 115 theatres in January 2006. It also beats the best mark for a five-day weekend set in 2004 by Shrek 2 with 528,617 admissions in 123 venues.

The rest of Argentina's historical top 10 openers according to admissions are The Matrix Reloaded, Titanic, Spider-Man, The Passion of the Christ, Godzilla, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and War of the Worlds.

Carlos Saldanha's new film took and impressive 63 percent of the overall market last weekend.

The original Ice Age debuted in July 2002 with just 176,179 spectators in its first four days of release.

"The first-weekend figures are impressive and have far exceeded our expectations," says Griselda Fortunado, general manager of 20th Century Fox Argentina. "The sequel will easily outpace the 1.65m tickets mark from the first Ice Age movie, and it's possible to break the 2.1m admissions figure set by Narnia, the most popular film of the year so far in Argentina. We expect to reach 2.5m at the end of the run," she adds.