Some Thoughts On "Pirates of the Caribbean's" Box Office

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)

Okay, I'm assuming by now everyone's seen "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," right? I guess everyone would have to, seeing as how this film is breaking all these records. The highest grossing pirate film ever. The biggest summer blockbuster. Heck, it even dethroned "Spider-Man's" five year record for the most money made in a single weekend. It is this last claim that has me a little skeptical. Now I'm not sure how many of you read the box office reports, but if you don't, and are a fan of movies, you should really get into that habit. Does it mean anything to you? Probably not. But much like baseball fans find glee it watching the sports statistics running across their TV screen, there is a certain amount of fun to keeping track how much tickets a movie sells.

It's also fun to see how much money a movie makes compared to how much it costs. For example, reading the box office reports shows an amusing little statistic in the form of "Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties." The movie was NOT a box office hit! The opening weekend showed the movie make around $5 million dollars and open at number eight. Hardly worthy to be called a hit right? Well the thing is, even though the film was deemed to be a flop, the film appeared to have legs as it made a steady $5 million a week for three weeks before it was pulled from most theater chains. This normally doesn't happen, and Fox might have made some money off the film if they had kept it in the theaters for several months (ah, but I guess there's a DVD release to be made to waste time on THAT).

Recently though, people are going gah-gah over "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" record-breaking opening weekend of $134 million dollars, saying that "Spider-Man's" record-breaking $113 million opening record had finally been broken. But honestly, were they expecting anything else? As always, there are factors to take into account for everything, and since you won't ever see Hollywood looking at factors, I guess I'll have to do it for them. Now, I hope this doesn't come off as a pirate hating blog to all of you, but I admit that simply sitting back and "accepting" this record breaking weekend has been a bit difficult for me. See, I'm a cynical person. A VERY cynical person! I look at factors, I look at variables, and I look at cause and effect.

First of all, let's look at "Spider-Man's" box office report:

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=spiderman.htm

A look at the daily report shows that "Spider-Man" opened on 3,165 screens on opening day. We also look at the fact that it had been years since we saw any kind of superhero movie, and the last one we did get was "Batman & Robin" (a movie that is so bad, that every movie director should just point out that they didn't make THAT movie whenever they get a complaint about a movie they made). We also notice that there were no midnight showings for "Spider-Man." Moving on, let's look at the box office report for "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest":

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=piratesofthecaribbean2.htm

Well, well, what do we have here? I see "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" had the fortune of having some midnight showings of the movie. On tope of which, it opened on 4,133 screens. 600 more screens then "Spider-Man" opened on. Oh, and HERE'S something you won't here from too many other people: Tickets cost $8.50 when "Spider-Man" came out but now cost $9.75. Well gee, isn't THAT a wake-up call! Taking all that into consideration, I'd say that about the same about of people went to see both movies, and that "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" is no more a success then most other action films. If you want box office results that REALLY impress, check out the box office report for "Gone With The Wind" (one of the movies we'll be watching for the Oscar discussion):

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=gonewiththewind.htm

Now you guys might be wondering what the big deal is with this report. $198 million is a far cry from record breaking. But keep in mind, "Gone With The Wind" came out in 1939, when a movie ticket would literally cost you a dime. If the same amount of people bought tickets to see this movie with today's price's, then "Gone With The Wind" would be the record winner with $1,293,085,600 in tickets sold. How's THAT for a wake-up call! So not to rain on Disney's publicity parade, but once they manage to sell THAT many tickets, I'll take their record breaking stunt more seriously. Oh, as for the movie itself, I admit it IS good! I liked it just as much as the first, no more, no less. There's just one thing that would have made the movie better then the first: The other half of it.

Currently Listening To: Michael W. Smith - "The Second Chance" Soundtrack