The records continued to fall to The Lord Of The Rings as the second week of The Two Towers theatrical run came to a close.

The fantasy sequel has already passed the $200m box office mark both from international territories and separately in North American. With $414m recorded by year's end, just 14 days into release, the film is expected to surpass its predecessor, The Fellowship Of The Ring, by some way.

The second weekend of The Two Towers was 30% up on Fellowship as it held up well in most territories and even saw an extensive rise in the Netherlands.

The sequel claimed $2.2m (Euros 2.1m) in the Netherlands over the four-day weekend (Dec 26-29) to record the best weekend result ever in the country - ahead of the $2.1m (Euros 2m) that Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone took between Nov 22-25, 2001.

The success saw The Two Towers rise 51% on its opening weekend in the territory and contributed a large part of the country's biggest ever box office weekend of $6.7m (Euros 6.4m). This is 14% higher than the Netherlands previous biggest weekend (Dec 27-30, 2001). The gross for The Two Towers was also 47% higher than the second weekend take of Fellowship in the territory.

The Two Towers also launched in Australia on Boxing Day (Dec 26) to break records for the biggest opening day gross and (then) single day gross with $2.9m. This was then immediately bettered on Friday Dec 27, when the film claimed the biggest Friday take ever with $3.3m.

Not content with stopping there however the film went on to claim further records as the fastest film to reach A$10m (achieved in just three days) and the biggest weekend gross of all time with $5m.

The Two Towers has already surpassed the total gross of Fellowship in Malaysia, taking $1.2m after 11 days on release. The original film claimed $1m in the territory.

It is also on the verge of achieving this feat in Singapore (where Two Towers has taken $2.06m to date compared to Fellowship's total of $2.15m) and Puerto Rico ($819,611 compared to $1.1m).

So far Germany and the UK lead the international territories with $43m and $41m respectively. Other highlights include France ($21m), Spain ($15.6m), S Korea ($10m), Mexico ($8.3m) and Sweden ($7.3m).