Crowds flock to watch The Return of the King

The last instalment of The Lord of the Rings trilogy was given a rousing welcome, breaking local box office records for an opening day on Wednesday.

Thousands packed the cinema complexes for the most hyped film of the year, already touted as a sure Oscar winner.

According to KRS Distributors manager Alex Pace, admissions for the opening day of the epic The Return of the King, which was released with the rest of the world, beat Gladiator and Star Wars: Episode 1.

"We don't recall seeing anything like this. This is really the film to watch this Christmas," Mr Pace said.

It might be hard to believe but hundreds sacrificed hours of their sleep early on Wednesday to pack into Eden Century's Cinema 16, the largest screen in Malta, to watch the first screening of The Return of the Ring - at 12.05 a.m.!

Devotees of the trilogy had the chance to watch all three films back-to-back on Tuesday evening at the Eden Century Cinemas, with The Return of the King showing at five minutes past midnight. A substantial crowd also watched the first two films of the trilogy.

The story repeated itself for the evening shows as tickets were practically snapped up by the early afternoon.

The end of the saga was greeted with applause.

The breathtaking The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the final film in the trilogy based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, raked in the biggest crowd for a first day, though KRS were not in a position to give figures as yet.

Mr Pace said he had no doubt that The Return of the King would be this season's major blockbuster, especially since contrary to previous years, The Lord of the Rings did not have any competition from Harry Potter or James Bond.

One also had to take into consideration that most cinema revenue came in at the weekend.

Though it would undoubtedly sell well, Mr Pace said he had little hope that it would surpass Malta's all-time best-selling film Titanic, which was watched by 202,000 people.

The Fellowship of the Ring ran for 15 weeks, with over 46,000 admissions and The Two Towers ran for 12 weeks and was watched by over 41,000.

The duration of The Return of the King - a staggering three-hours and 11-minutes - will undoubtedly put off a number of people.

Yet, critics have been singing the film's praises with the highlight of the film being its titanic-scale war, which makes The Two Towers' battle scenes seem like a skirmish.

The response overseas was equally enthusiastic with the film distributor hoping the film will break the all-time global box office barrier of $1 billion.

In the US, midnight takings for The Return of the King amounted to almost half of the first film's entire opening day box office receipts two years ago.