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'Spider-Man 3' shatters US box office records
2007-05-07
Spider-Man swooped to the top of the North American box office on Sunday with the superhero's latest film adventure netting a record-smashing 148 million dollars on its opening weekend. Figures released by box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations showed the web-spinning protagonist blasting the blockbuster season off to a super-high earning start. It dwarfed the previous record, set last year by Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," which earned 135.6 million in its first three days, the movie industry newspaper Variety reported. The single-day takings for "Spider-Man 3" on Friday came to 59 million, beating the "Pirates" record of 55.8 million in July 2006, Variety said. Among the other top grossing movies in North America this weekend, "Spider-Man 3" eclipsed the 5.7 million earned by by teen thriller "Disturbia" which it knocked into second place after three weeks at the top. The latest instalment in the fantasy action series sees Tobey Maguire as the web-shooting hero battling his arch-foe the Green Goblin while juggling a rival love interest to his high school sweetheart Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst). Clad in a new-look black spider suit -- the result of tainting by a malignant glob of protoplasm from outer space -- he finds himself confronted by the darker side of his personality as he faces high-octane combat with new villains, Venom and Sandman. American critics gave the sequel directed by Sam Raimi lukewarm reviews, with the Chicago Sun-Times saying the movie had too many "sluggish scenes" and the Los Angeles Times lamenting its "ungainly" pace. But the film won big audiences in the United States and abroad. "Spider-Man 3" shattered records in comic book-loving France where it was released on May 1, drawing more than 800,000 viewers in a single day, according to figures from the industry tracker CBO Box-Office. In Britain, the film raked in 11.45 million pounds (22.8 million dollars) over its debut weekend, the Guardian newspaper reported. That showing put it in third place behind "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" in all-time rankings. The film opened in Japan and other major Asian markets on May 1, three days before it debuted in the United States. The previous two "Spider-Man" films have earned more than 1.6 billion dollars worldwide since the first was released in 2002, making it one of the most successful movie franchises of all time. At the North America box office, "Fracture," a legal police drama starring Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling, rose to third place with takings of 3.5 million dollars, followed by another teen thriller, "The Invisible," with 3.1 million. "Next," the story of a Las Vegas magician who can glimpse a few minutes into the future starring Nicolas Cage and Julianne Moore, came in fifth with 2.7 million. The only other new release to rank this weekend, "Lucky You," with Eric Bana as an ace poker player competing in Las Vegas, took 2.5 million dollars, placing sixth. May will also see new films from two of the most profitable film franchises in history, "Shrek" and "Pirates of the Caribbean." The three film series have grossed over four billion dollars between them since 2001.
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