The New Zealand box office for 2011 totalled $161.8 mil­lion, a nine per cent drop from the 2010 box office take, the Motion Pic­ture Dis­trib­u­tors’ Asso­ci­a­tion (MPDA) announced today.

The MPDA says that tak­ing exter­nal fac­tors into con­sid­er­a­tion, 2011’s box office per­for­mance was “very robust”.

“It’s been a chal­leng­ing year with many fac­tors out­side the con­trol of the indus­try,” says Robert Crock­ett, pres­i­dent of the NZ Motion Pic­ture Dis­trib­u­tors’ Asso­ci­a­tion. “Specif­i­cally the dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake in Christchurch in Feb­ru­ary and the impact of the Rugby World Cup in September-October, which under­stand­ably saw a drop in admissions.”

“New Zealand has enjoyed a year of excit­ing and diverse film offer­ings,” he says, “rang­ing from the dark fan­tasy of Harry Pot­ter and the Deathly Hal­lows Part 2 and Twi­light Saga: Break­ing Dawn, to the com­pelling drama of The King’s Speech, the hilar­i­ous com­edy of The Hang­over Part 2 and Brides­maids, the action adven­ture of Pirates of the Caribbean — On Stranger Tides and Fast and Furi­ous 5, plus the return of well-loved ani­mated char­ac­ters in Kung Fu Panda 2 and Cars 2.”

High­est gross­ing film of the year in NZ was Harry Pot­ter and the Deathly Hal­lows Part 2, gross­ing over $7.8 mil­lion dollars.

The top gross­ing NZ-made films were Billy T: Te Movie, The Ora­tor, My Wed­ding and Other Secrets and Love­birds.