Third 'Pirates' to Sack Memorial Record
by Brandon Gray
May 27, 2007
Invading more screens (11,000-plus) and theaters (4,362) than any picture before it,
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End drew a hearty estimated $112.5 million over the three-day weekend for a $126.5 million total including Thursday night previews.
Buena Vista's supernatural swashbuckler notched the fifth-highest grossing opening weekend of all time, and it will officially shatter the Memorial Day weekend record on Monday, eclipsing
X-Men: The Last Stand's $122.9 million four-day start last year.
Casting a slight pallor over its bustling start,
At World's End loaded less loot than
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest did last July.
Dead Man's Chest snatched $135.6 million on its opening weekend, and this month's other major sequels,
Spider-Man 3 and
Shrek the Third, were each bigger than their predecessors out of the gate.
I think it was hard to expect it to top No. 2 [
Dead Man's Chest]," said Chris LeRoy, Buena Vista's senior vice president general sales manager. "Market conditions change so much from one movie to the other. What we wanted to accomplish was to break the Memorial Day weekend record and we're very pleased with that.
Spider-Man 3 had a wide open playing field and, though the market expanded to a spectacular degree [this weekend], there was just more competition. I don't like to put too much emphasis on what the opening weekend means."
Among major franchises, the norm is for the third movie to gross less than the second.
Lord of the Rings and
Star Wars were exceptions, and sequels released in close proximity to each other have suffered in the past, in part due to mixed word-of-mouth for the second movie (
The Matrix,
Back to the Future). The upshot is that it was unrealistic to expect
At World's End to exceed
Dead Man's Chest.
A "hail the conquering hero" appeal fueled
Dead Man's Chest after the immense good will that the first picture,
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, built up.
Dead Man's Chest satiated that demand in its $423.3 million run, resulting in less urgency for
At World's End. What's more, in its marketing,
At World's End looked like the same thing audiences experienced just ten months ago, lacking a clear new dramatic hook.
Overseas,
At World's End reached 102 territories over the weekend and captured an estimated $205.5 million since Wednesday. Including the domestic gross, its worldwide opening logged an estimated $332 million, the second-largest ever behind
Spider-Man 3's $381.7 million.
Meanwhile, last weekend's top grosser,
Shrek the Third, tumbled 58 percent to an estimated $51 million. That's less than
Shrek 2's second weekend, which was down 33 percent to $72.2 million on the same frame in 2004.
Shrek the Third had a somewhat bigger opening than
Shrek 2, but it's the nature of sequels to be more front-loaded than their predecessors and
Shrek the Third didn't bring anything new to the table to reinvigorate the franchise.
Spider-Man 3 crawled past $300 million on its 24th day of release, which was slower to the mark than
Spider-Man (19 days) and
Spider-Man (22 days). For the weekend, the webslinger's third movie faded 53 percent to an estimated $13.7 million. While it's on track to be the lowest-grossing of the franchise domestically, it's excelling overseas. Its foreign total grew to $499 million, highest of the series, for a worldwide tally of over $800 million.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=2321&p=.htm
I can't even raid it with positive results.
YEAH YEAH, I KNOW, I'M CRAZY!!!
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