Pirates: An International Box-Office Affair

Of course you've heard that Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End didn't beat Sony's Spider-Man 3's opening weekend office take (Spidey did $151 domestic in three days and Pirates came in at $142 over four). But as Sharon Waxman's NYT article implies today, domestic numbers are becoming the yard stick of the past and international box office is where the real players play. The studios have been tweaking their tent-pole pics to add multi-national appeal because international box office now accounts for more than half of annual box office. So while Pirates (reportedly made for $300 million) didn't set any records domestically, it did set a new industry benchmark by being released in more than 10,000 theaters in 104 countries and minting an estimated $401 million in worldwide ticket sale over six days of release ($156 million here and $245 million abroad). "It's truly what I'd call the modern-day Disney franchise," Mark Zoradi, president of Walt Disney Studios marketing and distribution told the NY Times. "We had such an international cast, we had a story that wasn't landlocked to North America, so this was the absolute perfect movie to open on global basis. That was the strategy."

May continues to be a big month for the movie biz and this Memorial Day weekend set a new domestic weekend record. Ticket sales are up 6.3% over last year, for a total of $3.6 billion, according to Media By Numbers.

[Photograph by Everett Collection]