'Lord of the Rings' fails to top Harry's takings

The Lord of The Ringshad the second most successful opening weekend in British cinema history, taking £11m in its first three days.

Top opening weekends 1 Harry Potter £16.3m 2 Lord of the Rings £11m 3 Star Wars: The Phantom Menace £9.5m 4 Toy Story 2 £7.7m 5= Independence Day £7m Men in Black £7m 7 Bridget Jones £5.7m 8= Jurassic Park £4.8m Titanic £4.8m 10 Gladiator £3.5m 11 Full Monty £1.5m

The Lord of The Ringshad the second most successful opening weekend in British cinema history, taking £11m in its first three days.

Only the £16.3m earned in the first weekend by Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone exceeds the initial success of The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring.

The two films have trounced the opening weekend performances of Britain's other biggest-grossing films, putting them on course to break previous box-office records.

Figures released yesterday by ACNeilsen, a market research company, showed The Lord of The Rings took £11m at 470 screens in its first weekend. It was by far the most popular film over Christmas ­ with Harry Potter taking £1.6m during the same period ­ but, as expected, it could not equal the child wizard's opening takings.

However, they are both well ahead of all other previous British openings, with the third-placed Star Wars: The Phantom Menace taking £9.5m in its first weekend in 1999. By comparison, Titanic, the biggest-grossing film in Britain, managed only £4.8m in its first three days, despite going on to earn £68.9m.

Harry Potter is now the fourth most successful film in Britain, behind Titanic, The Full Monty and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Its rate of progress suggests it could ultimately beat the record set by Titanic: two weeks ago it was lying in sixth place, with earnings of £43.3m.

A spokeswoman for ACNeilsen said the two films were making cinematic history. "Harry Potter is the biggest opener ever and is going to stay that way for a long time but The Lord of the Rings is doing incredibly well."

The Lord of the Rings took £32m in its first weekend in the United States, compared to £66m earned by Harry Potter when it opened there last month.

New Line, the film company that made the epic fantasy based on J R R Tolkien's novel, said it never expected The Lord of the Rings to match Harry Potter's opening box office totals. The epic is aimed at an older audience and its three-hour running time restricts the number of times a day it can be shown on each screen.

A spokesman for Entertainment Film Distributors, which distributes the film in the UK, said its extra length meant it had 1,000 fewer shows a day than Harry Potter, making a direct comparison impossible. Ticket sales were now standing at slightly more than £13m. He said: "It is an excellent figure when you look at the length of the film. It was more than Titanic in its first weekend and that is more of a fair comparison because Titanic was so long as well.

"Cinemas are turning people away and that is the real sign of just how well it is doing. Everybody in our office is saying they can't get in to see it."