Lord Of The Rings: Fellowship Of The Ring has become the biggest box office earner of all time in its home territory, New Zealand - fittingly the first country where it has done so, but with other nations set to follow shortly. It is due to pass $500m internationally within the next week.

Lord Of The Rings overtook Titanic on March 18 to become the biggest box office earner of all time in New Zealand, which is using the Middle Earth tag on everything from marketing to international tourists to selling agricultural products.

At that point it had sold just over $5.4m (NZ$13m) worth of tickets but, with Oscar hype and national pride still in full swing, it is still going strong. In fact, Black Hawk Down has been the only film to date that has managed to push it out of the top spot - for two consecutive weeks in late February - in the 12 weeks since it was released. New Zealand's population is less than four million people.