Filed under: Box-Office News

‘Pirates 3′ Wants Box-Office Booty

A move to add more screenings and get more money

So, Spider-Man 3 opens to a confirmed $151.1 million over the course of this last 3-day weekend and now that Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest has seen its opening weekend record smashed by over $15 million Disney wants its record back. So what do they do? According to Variety they tell theaters to begin scheduling screenings of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End at 8 PM on Thursday, May 24. Variety seems to think the move “could conceivably regain bragging rights for the top opening frame” for the Mouse House.

Even though Spidey 3’s numbers included midnight and 3 AM screenings, those times are legitimately inside the Friday and three-week time frame. With Disney opening the film one day earlier, even if it is only 4 hours earlier, it is still on Thursday, thus not making it a legitimate three-day weekend.

With rumors that At World’s End is going to have a running time north of 150 minutes and won’t be shown on as many screens as Spidey’s record-breaking 4,252 theaters I don’t think Pirates 3 stands a chance at breaking the opening weekend record set by the webbed one, even though I do think it will outlast Spider-Man 3 and make a whole boatload of cash worldwide.

The other big opening this month is Shrek the Third, which is sticking to its May 18 release, especially since its audience will be going to school on Friday and not likely out catching midnight screenings the night before.

Can Pirates 3 break the opening weekend record? Doubtful. Will it make more than Spider-Man 3 overall? You tell us in this week’s poll.

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Post #1
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There is one small mistake in your article. Shrek the Third will be opening a day early. I work for a corporation that owns 20 theatres, and all but 2 have 10pm Thursday 5/17 openings of Shrek. One more little blurb, this being my opinion, if the running time of Pirates is at 150min, then you can bet that you need to add 30 more min to that for all of the promo times and slow starts. With Pirates starting at 8pm there would be 2 showings in most cases. Ending sometime around 1am. Even if its playing the day before it officially opens, it more then likely will get the same amount of play times as spidey got. I could be wrong, I doubt that I am though.

- RickH
( May 8th, 2007 | 8:57 pm )
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Post #2
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That’s interesting because the Variety article said Shrek wasn’t going to open early and that is what I went off of. Also, from what I have now heard Pirates is going to be 165 minutes. As for it getting as much play time as Spidey I don’t think that is possible considering Spidey was on SO MANY screens, record breaking number of screens. Pirates 3 will be on a lot of screens, but so will Shrek and Spidey at the same time, which I think is going to mean Pirates will not be breaking the record…. Just my opinion. Thanks for the notes though!

- bradbrevet
( May 9th, 2007 | 12:25 pm )
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