A clampdown on pirated movies and a string of Hollywood blockbusters have led to record box-office earnings in Malaysia, a report said today.

The scarcity of cheap pirated movies since the launch of the government blitz has created a new pool of cinema-goers as people abandon their VCD and DVD players and head for the cinemas.

Major drawcards have been 'Finding Nemo', 'Charlie's Angels 2:Full Throttle', 'Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines' and 'Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life'.

The new releases were typically raking in around double the RM2 million earnings of previous top movies, industry executives said.

"July is a record month in terms of collection, with the highly successful Terminator 3," Golden Screen Cinema (GSC) chief executive Koh Mei Lee was quoted as saying by the Business Times .

Nemo a top hit

Parents are mainly responsible for making the animated Finding Nemo one of the longest running films in Malaysia, the report said.

The movie is on its way to the twelfth week of screening after opening here at the end of May, during the height of the crackdown.

Koh said a 10 percent increase in her company's box office receipts for 2003 is "achieveable" and she expects it will continue to grow between 10 and 15 percent for the next two to three years, unless the hawkers of pirated discs make a comeback.

GSC controls half of the local market for cinema operations which is a RM110 million-a-year industry.

The blitz has led to the seizure of nearly four million discs estimated to be worth over RM26 million between May and August, according to Malaysian official figures.

Pirated discs were widely available in Malaysia before the crackdown, where latest releases were readily sold even before their Hollywood premiere, sometimes for as little as RM3. - AFP