We’ve all been expecting it to, it’s just been a matter of when. And now Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has finally done it. It is the fifteenth film to take more than a billion dollars around the world.
There were three new additions to the list last year, kicking off with Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, and followed soon after by Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises.
Sam Mendes’ Skyfall took a lot of us by surprise to become the first ever Bond film to break the billion-dollar barrier at the end of last year, along with becoming the highest-grossing UK film of all time.
And now Jackson’s first instalment in the upcoming The Hobbit trilogy has crossed the threshold, taking more than one billion dollars all over the world.
Jackson becomes the third director to have two films amongst the fifteen, joining the ranks of James Cameron (Avatar and Titanic) and Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight Rises and The Dark Knight).
Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the final instalment in his original Middle-earth trilogy, currently sits in sixth place, having taken just shy of $1.12bn in late 2003/early 2004.
What will be very interesting to see in the years to come is whether The Desolation of Smaug and/or There and Back Again will earn him any further entries on the list.
An Unexpected Journey opened to $18m. in China at the end of February, inching it that much closer to the billion-dollar mark. And now it has crossed it, and will no doubt continue to rise in the weeks to come. Its current position of $1.001bn. sees it sitting behind The Dark Knight ($1.004bn.) in fifteenth place, but it could continue to rise through the ranks if it performs well in China in the coming weeks.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is still playing in select theatres, and will be released on Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, and DVD on 19th March in the US and 8th April in the UK.
Source: Box Office Mojo.
