BOX OFFICE: PIRATES takes the gold but not the big treasure?
$122 million opening is HUGE and a big success, but it doesn't quite take the full gold of beating out SPIDER-MAN 3.
Even though the film debuted on more screens than Spider-Man 3 a couple of weeks back, at the end of the day Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End failed to beat the webbed superhero's record of $148 million this weekend. Instead, Pirates took home $126.5 million which was even less than Shrek the Third's total, though I have a feeling this film may have longer legs in our cinema screens than the previous two mentioned. Pirates is now the 5th biggest opening weekend of all time, which might be slightly disappointing for Disney who must have thought they had a real chance of beating Spidey to number 1... but a subdued advertising campaign meant that was always going to be difficult (though they did save a lot of money on that front). Those legs I was talking about are clearly not there for Shrek and Spider-Man. Shrek's numbers dropped 58% from last week to a $51 million taking, which is far more severe than Shrek 2's drop of 38% a few years back. Spider-Man 3 also dropped over 50% to fall to a terrible $13 million taking in only it's third week. With a domestic total of $303 million it's by far the weakest of the franchise in the U.S. but worldwide it's doing incredible numbers of around $800 million. The only other big new release of the week was William Friedkin's well reviewed horror movie Bug starring Ashley Judd. The film took in $3.2 million on it's opening weekend in only 1,601 screens. Not a bad opening for slot it was given. 1 Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) $122.54M $126.54M 2 Shrek the Third (2007) $51.04M $201.38M 3 Spider-Man 3 (2007) $13.7M $303.34M 4 Bug (2007) $3.26M $3.26M 5 Waitress (2007) $3.07M $5.59M 6 28 Weeks Later (2007) $2.48M $23.60M 7 Georgia Rule (2007) $1.85M $16.28M 8 Disturbia (2007) $1.75M $74.26M 9 Wild Hogs (2007) $1.09M $162.91M 10 Fracture (2007) $1.07M $36.60M OPENING NEXT WEEK: Knocked Up, Mr. Brooks, Rise: Blood Hunter, Gracie, Day Watch (limited), Crazy Love (limited), Pierrepoint (limited) source - box office mojo