LOS ANGELES – Johnny Depp and his pirate friends are keeping all the box-office treasure for themselves.
Depp’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” remained the top movie for the third straight weekend, hauling in $35 million and lifting its total to $321.7 million after just 17 days, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The Disney sequel passed the $305 million domestic total that its predecessor, 2003’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,” rang up in its entire six-month run.
“Dead Man’s Chest” easily beat back a rush of new movies, which were led by Sony’s family film “Monster House,” a spooky animated tale that debuted at No. 2 with $23 million. The movie follows the adventures of a group of children at a mysterious neighbor’s scary home.
Opening in third was M. Night Shyamalan’s “Lady in the Water,” an adult fairy tale from Warner Bros. that took in $18.2 million. Starring Paul Giamatti as an apartment manager who discovers a water nymph (Bryce Dallas Howard) living beneath his complex’s swimming pool, the movie was the weakest debut for writer-director Shyamalan in a string of wide releases since 1999 that included the blockbusters “The Sixth Sense” and “Signs.”
Kevin Smith’s “Clerks II,” a Weinstein Co. and MGM follow-up to his 1994 independent-film hit about two slackers on the job, premiered at No. 6 with $9.6 million.
Uma Thurman and Luke Wilson’s “My Super Ex-Girlfriend,” a 20th Century Fox comedy about a superhero taking revenge against the boyfriend who jilted her, debuted at No. 7 with $8.7 million.
Overall movie business rose, with the top 12 movies taking in $143.2 million, up 11 percent from the same weekend last year, when “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” was the No. 1 movie with $28.3 million.
Hollywood continued its modest rebound after a 2005 slump in which movie attendance fell 8 percent from the previous year. So far this year, attendance is up 3.8 percent compared to 2005, according to box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations.
Summer attendance had been running slightly behind 2005’s but now is 4 percent ahead because of a surge the past three weekends.
“That’s really attributable to the strength of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean,’ because that’s when the tide turned,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations.
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