Tom Cruise rules the box office, OK

Tom Cruise in a scene from film 'Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol'. Picture: Supplied. Source: Supplied

THE Adventures of Tintin may have won the Boxing Day battle, but Tom Cruise's Mission: Impossible is winning the war.

Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson's 3D animation The Adventures of Tintin took $2.93 million last weekend to top the Aussie box office, taking its gross since Boxing Day to $6.88 million.

Another 3D animated Boxing Day release, locally-made sequel Happy Feet Two, is at No.2 with $2.21 million (for a total of $4.67 million).

Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol came in at No.3 for the weekend with $2.17 million. However the action thriller, which was released December 15, ruled the final week of 2011 at the box office, taking over $4 million.

Its total gross of $12.5 million makes it the clear holiday frontrunner- and it's not losing any pace.

Cruise's first Mission: Impossible film in five years also held on to the No.1 spot in the US with a $36.9 million weekend.

It has hauled in $136.5 million in the US so far, outstripping the performance of Mission: Impossible III in just 17 days of release.

Hot weather over the weekend saw millions flock to Australian cinemas, also leading to strong figures for comedy Tower Heist ($2.1 million), War Horse ($1.96 million), We Bought a Zoo ($1.54 million) and Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked ($1.23 million).

The Iron Lady- for which Meryl Streep is a strong Oscar tip- took $1.49 million to land at No.7. The Margaret Thatcher biopic is the top arthouse title of the season, but is also pulling in the most money per-screen of any film on the chart, averaging $12,810 off 116 ! screens.

Overall, the past weekend's figures are $1 million up on the same period last year.

The only new release hitting cinemas today is Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, in which Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law return, respectively, as Holmes and his sidekick Watson.