Estimated Downloads: 8,400,000Worldwide Grosses: $1,017,003,568 Despite Peter Jackson's follow-up to his The Lord of the Rings trilogy not managing to set the world alight in terms of critical reception or box office receipts quite as much as its predecessor, it's clear that the films do still have a huge audience. However, it's somewhat surprising that The Hobbit takes the top spot being that sheer spectacle has been a major selling point for all of Jackson's trips to Middle-earth. In fact, this was particularly true for An Unexpected Journey with the push for 48 FPS high frame-rate 3D. Perhaps such a huge amount of viewers forgoing the cinema experience for a movie like this says something about the era of 3D movies coming to an end - or perhaps it's more of an indication of curiosity rather than out-and-out interest in another trip to Middle-earth. It'll certainly be interesting to see where The Desolation of Smaug ranks on the 2014 list.
