Shaping up as the fastestgrossing film in history, New Line Cinema'sThe Fellowship Of The Ring, the first in its Lord Of The Rings trilogy, has crossed the $350m barrier at the globalbox office in just two weeks on over 8,000 prints.

At the end of Tuesday (NewYear's Day), the film had taken $174m in North America and $176m ininternational territories since its Dec 19 opening in the US and 16international territories. Five other territories followed on Dec 20, four moreon Dec 21 and Australia on Dec 26.

Leading internationalterritory was the UK where Entertainment Film Distributors took $37.5m on 1,092screens. Warner Bros grossed $35m on 1,070 screens in Germany, MetropolitanFilmexport took $24m in 767 theatres in France and Aurum took $12.5m on 497screens in Spain.

Other highpoints includedAustralia ($9m) and New Zealand - where the film was shot ($2.4m) - which were both released by Roadshow Film Distributors, Mexico where Videocinetook $8m and Scandinavia, where Svensk broke records taking $6m in Sweden, $4min Denmark and $3m in Norway.

In Asia, the film has so faronly opened in two piracy-heavy territories - Singapore, where it grossed$1.8m through Warner Bros, and Malaysia, where it took $0.95m through MediaOne.

New Line's president andCOO, worldwide distribution and marketing, Rolf Mittweg wouldn't be drawnon any estimates for the film's final take, but he did say thatword-of-mouth was strong across the world and that the studio has high hopesfor key Oscar nominations. "We want to keep the momentum going throughuntil March," he said.

The release of the film wascancelled in Argentina due to the unstable political climate in the country atpresent. Other openings to come include much of Latin America, Korea (throughTaewon Entertainment) and the Philippines (both on Jan 4), Taiwan (Jan 19through CMC), Hong Kong (Jan 31), India (Feb 2), Indonesia (Feb 7) and Japan(through Nippon Herald) on Feb 23.