If you've read movie news the last couple of days, you cannot have missed the fact that Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest had the biggest opening weekend ever. The movie made more than $ 135 million ($ 135.634.554 to be precise), and bested the old opening record by almost $ 21 million. But which other movies have had openings big enough for movie news sites to break out their biggest possible lettersize so they could break this news?
From this list, it soon becomes clear that original movies don't really stand a chance when it comes to opening big. The first completely original movie, that is not based on existing properties and not a sequel, only comes at number 19. Pixar's Incredibles flies the flag for originality, with a total opening weekend revenue of about $70.5 million, while another Pixar-movie, Finding Nemo, closes the list with a revenue of just under $ 70.3 million (in case you are wondering, Cars is at number 33 in this list). Apart from those movies, it's all sequels, and movies based on books and comics. There's four superhero movies (not counting Incredibles, as this was an original story), five movies based on books, and 14 sequels in this list, showing that sequels are still the safest bet when you want to open your movie big.
1 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (Buena Vista) $135,6 million
2 Spider-Man (Sony) $114,8 million
3 Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (Fox) $108,4 million
4 Shrek 2 (Dreamworks) 108,0 million
5 X-Men: The Last Stand (Fox) $102,8 million
6 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (WB) $102,7 million
7 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (WB) $93,7 million
8 The Matrix Reloaded (WB) $91,8 million
9 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (WB) $90,3 million
10 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (WB) $88,4 million
11 Spider-Man 2 (Sony) $88,2 million
12 X2: X-Men United (Fox) $85,6 million
13 The Passion of the Christ (Newmarket) $83,9 million
14 Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (Fox) $80,0 million
15 The Da Vinci Code (Sony) $77,1 million
16 Austin Powers in Goldmember (New Line) $73,1 million
17 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (New Line) $72,6 million
18 The Lost World: Jurassic Park 2 (Universal) $72,1 million
19 The Incredibles (Buena Vista) $70,4 million
20 Finding Nemo (Buena Vista) $70,2 million
Comments