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.
{{/usCountry}}"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.
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