After 14 weeks on release, this year's surprise summer hit Der Schuh Des Manitu has broken the 15-year record held by comedy Otto - Der Film to become the most successful German film since records began, in 1980.

Michael "Bully" Herbig's Western parody clocked up total admissions of more than 8.85 m by October 21, taking it past Otto - Der Film's long-standing record set in 1985 of 8.78m admissions.

In fact, the Constantin Film release shows no sign of running out of steam, having attracted over 200,000 more cinemagoers in the last weekend (October 18-21) it will pass the 9m mark in the coming weeks.

However, Manitu still has a way to go to catch the all-time box office champion in Germany: Titanic, which was seen by 17m people in 1998 achieving a gross of $105.4m (DM231.8m) - although it looks good to enter the all-time top three, with the third-placed film, Star Wars: Episode 1 just $910,000 (DM2m) ahead of Manitu's current gross of $44.5m (DM 97.8m).

Beta Cinema, the feature film division of the KirchGroup's world sales company Beta Film, has acquired the international rights to Manitu and will start selling the film at next week's MIFED market

Meanwhile, in Austria, Manitu has now posted 1.78m admissions, thus relegating blockbuster Titanic to second place in the Austrian all-time box-office.

At the same time, the German Federal Film Board's (FFA) statistics show that distributor Constantin Film and its subsidiary Olga Film were behind eight of the most successful German films from the past 20 years.

Germany's top 10 local films (1980 - 2001)

Film''''''''''Admissions..Distributor
Der Schuh Des Manitu''''8.85m'.Constantin Film
Otto - Der Film'''''''8.78m'..Tobis Film
Der Bewegte Mann'''''.6.57m'..Constantin Film
Otto - Der neue Film''''..6.48m'..Tobis Film
Der Name Der Rose'''''5.50m.'Constantin Film
Maenner''''''''''5.21m'..Olga Film
Werner - Das Muss Kesseln!'4.92m'..Constantin Film
Werner - Beinhart!'''''..4.89m'..Constantin Film
Die Unendliche Geschichte''4.78m'..Constantin Film
Christiane F''''''''...4.70m'.Constantin Film