E-Paper
$132 mn debut for Pirates sequel
Depp's boozy, woozy buccaneer Jack Sparrow has plundered the US and Canadian box office.
Johnny Depp's boozy, woozy buccaneer Jack Sparrow has plundered the US and Canadian box office, with
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
taking in a record $132 million in its first three days, according to studio estimates.
Disney's swashbuckling sequel sailed past the previous all-time best debut, 2002's Spider-Man, which took in $114.8 million in its first weekend.
Dead Man's Chest also did nearly three times the business of its predecessor, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, which took in $46.6 million over opening weekend in 2003.
The sequel surpassed that total in its first day alone, taking in $55.5 million Friday to beat the previous single-day record of $50 million, set last year by Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith. With $44.7 million yesterday, Dead Man's Curse also became the first movie to top $100 million in just two days.
Despite sky-high projections for the Pirates sequel from industry analysts, producer Jerry Bruckheimer said he had expected Dead Man's Chest to open closer to the $77 million debut weekend of last spring's The Da Vinci Code.
"When people in the industry predicted these high numbers, I thought they were just trying to be mean. So no matter how good we did, if we did $100 million, we'd be failures," Bruckheimer said.
