It's official: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is a failure. It made only $62.2 million last weekend, failing to break the second-weekend record owned by, of all things, Shrek 2. Poor, poor Disney. Ahem. Yeah, you're right -- they're probably ok over there, what with setting a new record for 10-day earnings ($258 million) and passing X-Men: The Last Stand as the year's top-grossing film and all. In addition, the film's per-screen earnings -- slightly over $15,000 -- were matched only by Gabrielle, a French film that opened on only two screens. Most of the films in the top 20 struggled to take in $5000/screen.Though POTC2 fell off by more than 50% from last week, it still easily outdistanced the weekend's two major debuts, You, Me and Dupree and Little Man, both of which opened solidly with around $21 million (Little Man was in 500 fewer theaters). Superman Returns recovered a bit from the Pirates broadside and finished the weekend in the fourth spot, with $11.6 million. In other news, The Break-Up, which is gradually being scaled back, finally left the top 10, ending the weekend with a take of under $1 million from 797 screens, good enough for fourteenth place. Full numbers are after the jump.
