It was a beautiful summer Memorial Day weekend with the recovery of one of the anchors from Blackbeard’s pirate ship and today, we’re recovering from another hangover. It was a sequelicious weekend with the boys of #1 The Hangover Part II celebrating Stu’s pre-wedding brunch with $85.946 million and Jack Black’s Po fought to #2 with Kung Fu Panda 2 at $47.656 million. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides docked at #3 with $39.828 million. #4 Bridesmaids and #5 Thor topped off the top five with $16.551 million and $9.533 million, respectively.
Though Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides was #3 in the States, internationally, it was #1. The foreign box office total for the weekend was $123 million bringing the total foreign gross to $470.8 million, almost three times the total domestic box office. Still the fourth movie in the franchise is trailing the original and the subsequent two sequels. Coincidentally on Friday (May 27), archaeologists recovered an everyday anchor from the Queen Anne’s Revenge off the coast of North Carolina. The 11’4″ anchor with arms reaching 7’7″ across weighs an estimated 2,500 to 3,000 pounds. It is the third-largest artifact amongst the more than 250,000 almost 300-year-old artifacts recovered at the National Register of Historic Sites shipwreck site. Before being renamed Queen Anne’s Revenge, the ship was a French slave ship until Blackbeard (believed to be named Edward Teach or Thatch) commandeered it. The pirate was killed five months after the sinking of the ship by Royal Navy volunteers in Ocracoke Inlet in November 1718.
The Almighty Thor (lightly) hammered to its fourth week in the top five. With a 38.3% drop in gross and a theater count of 3296 (628 less than the week before), the Marvel movie surpassed its $150 million budget by about $12 million domestically. Overseas, the God of Thunder is fairing better with its total foreign gross of $249.51 million. Do we predict a sequel?
Check out ‘What To Watch – Theater Edition’ this Friday for this week’s new movie releases…get to know Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr before they became Professor X and Magneto.
Feed me at sharon@horrorhaven.com
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