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Pirates-3 smashes records around the world
2007-05-29
"Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" sliced through opening week records around the world, pulling in 404 million dollars over six days, Walt Disney Studios said Tuesday. The third in the "Pirates" series, with Johnny Depp as swaggering Captain Jack Sparrow, busted opening week records in 16 countries from Argentina to Iceland, to Russia, Malaysia and Taiwan, Disney said. It outpaced the previous world opening record of 382 million dollars racked up by "Spider-Man 3" just four weeks ago -- and the newest "Pirates" has yet to open in the world's two most populous countries, China and India. But it failed to break "Spider-Man 3's" hold on the US and Canada weekend opening record of 151.1 million dollars, for a three-day weekend. "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" sold 139.8 million dollars in tickets over the four-day Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial opening of the summer movie season. Altogether the top 12 films -- led by three blockbuster sequels, "Pirates," "Shrek The Third" and "Spider-Man 3" -- pulled in 246.4 million dollars in the North American theaters over the weekend, 14.5 million higher than last year's Memorial Day weekend total, according to box office specialist Exhibitor Relations. "Shrek" earned 67 million dollars, while "Spider-Man 3" pulled in 18.1 million, taking its US and Canada total since opening to 307.8 million dollars. Coming in fourth behind the three sure-thing sequels was the Ashley Judd-starring psychological thriller "Bug" in its debut weekend, earning 4.0 million dollars. Surging to fifth on the back of rave reviews was the romantic comedy "Waitress," which grossed four million dollars in its fourth week following release. In sixth place came another sequel, "28 Weeks Later," following the 2003 British zombie thriller "28 Days Later," which portrayed Britain being devastated by a deadly virus. "28 Weeks Later" earned 3.3 million over the four days in its third week of release. Trailing was teen thriller "Disturbia" with 2.4 million; the Lindsay Lohan vehicle "Georgia Rule", 2.4 million; "Fracture" with 1.7 million; and "Wild Hogs" with 1.4 million. "The Invisible" and "Away From Her" rounded out the top 12 with 1.1 million dollars and 950,000 dollars in box office loot, respectively.
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