Johnny Depp News

Johnny Depp

July 2006
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From Box Office Mojo
Sunday July 30, 2006
Domestic Total for Dead Man's Chest as of Jul. 30, 2006: $358,372,000 (Estimate)

From Hello Magazine
JOHNNY WEARS LOVE FOR DAUGHTER LILY CLOSE TO HIS HEART
28 JULY 2006
Johnny's dressed-down look for his interview with US chatshow host David Letterman found favour with fans gathered to glimpse their hero

For a 43-year-old father of two, Johnny Depp has always had pretty eclectic fashion tastes. And Hollywood's most delicious dad was showing off his quirky dress sense when he dropped in for a chat with interviewer David Letterman on Thursday.
he Pirates Of The Caribbean actor greeted fans outside the studio in a pair of mud-splattered boots, jeans and a white shirt, worn under one of his trademark leather jackets. His outfit was finished off with a trendy assortment of pendants, including a metal disc engraved with the name and birth date of daughter Lily Rose. Another of the star's adornments - a leather necklace hung with cross bones - clearly owed something to his roguish Pirates character Jack Sparrow.

One of his pendants - the silver disc - bore the name and birth date of his little girl, Lily Rose

Johnny's look obviously got the thumbs up from a young female admirer, who dashed out of the crowd to get an autograph and a hug. She's not the only well-wisher who'll have been impressed by his latest silver screen offering - cinema goers have flocked in droves to see Johnny's personification of the high seas adventurer. Dead Man's Chest, the second installment of the Caribbean franchise, recently became the fastest ever flick to hit the $100-million mark at the box office.

From the Guardian
More about Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
In praise of... Johnny Depp
Wednesday July 26, 2006
For three years running, dwindling audiences have prompted fears that the digital age was taking its toll on America's cinemas. But new figures show they have turned the corner: admissions are rising again. No individual deserves all the credit, but the man with the best claim is Johnny Depp. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is smashing box office records, and its sucess lies behind the overall rise. Yet, like the first Pirates movie, the film would be indifferent without Depp's remarkable acting. The New Yorker praised his swaggering performance in the first film as offering "diverse echoes of WC Fields, Toshiro Mifune and Keith Richards on a bender". The Pirates sensation has grown to the point where the real Richards plays alongside Depp in a sequel now being filmed.
But the phenomenon of Captain Jack Sparrow is merely the latest in a line of portrayals that have stood out for inventiveness and quirk. He has shrewdly chosen roles demanding these qualities - from a man with blades where hands should be (the eponymous Edward Scissorhands), to a 17th-century poet, womaniser and pornographer (Rochester in The Libertine). He has never developed Hollywood's airs and graces - he was not above popping in for a pint with locals at the Bear in Crickhowell, and he marked the end of a glamourous relationship by tweaking his "Winona Forever" tattoo to read "Wino Forever". Like cinemas everywhere, our message to Johnny is just keep it up.

From the Braedenton Herald
Wed, Jul. 26, 2006
From food to autos, companies tie wares to 'Pirates' to nab booty
SARA K. CLARKE
The Orlando Sentinel
ORLANDO - M&Ms have gone gilded.
Kellogg's has plastered Johnny Depp's dreamy pirate face on cereal boxes.
And Volvo has buried a sport utility vehicle as part of a global treasure hunt.
Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" pulled in $35 million at the box office this past weekend, bringing the movie's haul to $321.7 million after 17 days. The success came with loads of pirate-themed marketing and merchandise, from action figures to aquarium decor.
So what is it about "Pirates" and other blockbusters that is so attractive to marketers?
In short, the Hollywood hits drive limited-edition promotions, reach new demographics and lure consumers with the selling power of celebrities.
Masterfoods USA - maker of such candies as M&Ms and Skittles - credits movie tie-ins with helping to maintain the status of its candy as "a current pop-culture icon." But in addition to the cool factor, the candy promotions help test the waters on new consumer trends.
For "Pirates," the company debuted the white-chocolate M&Ms, a limited-edition item called Pirate Pearls. They also issued new color blends: Captain's Gold and Jack's Gems.
"We definitely gauge consumer reaction," said Joan Buyce, a spokeswoman for Masterfoods USA, a division of Mars, Inc. "It's a way for them to try different flavors and new color blends."
After the red and yellow M&Ms joined the "dark side" for a Star Wars promotion last year, 30,000 people asked for the dark-chocolate candies to stay. This month, the candies joined the M&Ms lineup permanently.
For carmaker Volvo, partnering with "Pirates" helped it reach a new demographic.
Product placement in the swashbuckling flick was impossible, so Volvo got creative, staging a hunt for a buried pirate-themed XC90.
In the United States, more than 52,000 would-be pirates flocked to Volvo dealerships to get their treasure maps.
"What it's really done is brought Volvo into a lot of people's minds who otherwise wouldn't have considered us," said Roger Ormisher, a spokesman for Volvo Cars North America. "People are going in and getting a map, and taking an interest in the car as well."
And for marketers, the power of celebrities never hurts.
While the special effects and cheeky humor made "Pirates" a hit with male viewers, actors Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom made women and teen girls swoon.
But there is a risk for marketers who partner with a potential blockbuster.
"There's a fair amount of financial commitment," said Mark Johnston, professor of marketing at Rollins College in Winter Park. "If the movie is not a success, that may be money that you spend that you may not be able to recover."
But with "Pirates," box-office booty was all but guaranteed.
The success of the first "Pirates" movie - and the popularity of the Pirates ride at Disney parks - made for a proven franchise, said Marc Rosenberg, chief marketing officer of Zizzle, the master licensee for Pirates of the Caribbean toys.
"When 25 million people a year go through the ride, it's really taken on a life of its own at that point," Rosenberg said. "We really see this as an evergreen property."
Disney, too, has big expectations for "Pirates." Over the next 10 years, the franchise will be the key boys brand, akin to the popular Disney Princesses for girls.
Disney expects the action-packed franchise will appeal to older boys, a market the company is courting.
So when it comes to choosing a movie partner, how's a company to decide?
7-Eleven's Slurpees have partnered with movies such as "Shrek 2" and "Star Wars." This summer, it was "X-Men" and "Superman" flicks, but not "Pirates."
For Cheree Bowen, the chain's marketing manager for proprietary beverages, many factors go into the partnerships, such as demographics, box-office success and the movie's characters.
"Whoever the movie studio expects will come into the movie theater to see their film, we want to make sure that fits with who's going to walk into our store."

From InTooDepp scanned from the Globe(about Johnny's first wife Lori)

From the Hollywood Reporter
July 25, 2006
Emmys will walk plank in ABC kudo-night plan
By Ray Richmond
It's starting to get downright nasty in Emmyland. ABC announced during the weekend that it's going to counterprogram NBC's telecast of the Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony on Aug. 27 by showing "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," which certainly seems to be a petulant reaction from ABC to the network's Emmy snubs this year.
Talk about cutting off a nose to spite one's face. ABC and USA Network paid in excess of $20 million combined for "Pirates" telecast rights, and ABC decides to blow it off in late August against the industry's preeminent awards show. And for what? Revenge? Yeah, that sounds like a wise business decision. (An ABC spokeswoman described the move as "competitive scheduling.") I'm sure the folks at the one ABC show that did rake in nominations, "Grey's Anatomy," weren't happy to hear that should they go all the way to the top drama series prize, they'd better hope the Emmy show runs past 11 p.m. (which is, in fact, a pretty safe bet) to get out of the way of Jack Sparrow and crew.
ABC Entertainment president Stephen McPherson has made no secret of his extreme displeasure with the nominations, chiefly the exclusion of "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" for any major awards attention. Some have blamed the much-ballyhooed new voting process. Others have pinned it on poor episode submission choices.
Regardless, trying to get even with the Emmys at the expense of your own nominated shows -- not to mention the respect for one's competitors -- is thoughtless and immature. This is not to even mention the fact that ABC, with a collective total of 63 nominations, outpaced every other broadcaster. The message: Payback matters more than our honorees.
"Emmy" host Conan O'Brien said during an interview Monday morning that he was finding it difficult not to take this personally.
"Yeah, I'm actually feeling like this is an attack on me," O'Brien admits. "And so I'd like to announce that we're going to counterprogram with the second 'Pirates of the Caribbean' movie. I've gotten Disney's permission to take my poor-quality bootleg and project it on a wall of the Shrine Auditorium sometime about mid-show. We're gonna wind up losing about 15 categories, but I feel like it's worth it."
Taking a slightly more serious tone, O'Brien reasons that ABC's decision to counterprogram is disturbing in part because the show is going to be ratings-challenged as it is, airing on Aug. 27.
"We're probably not looking at a ratings juggernaut," he figures. "Yet ABC has thrown down the gauntlet and determined that it makes sense to fight NBC wielding a huge dagger for the equivalent of a crouton."
If the purpose of the new voting system determining nominees was to quell some of the criticism of the repetitive nominees of recent years, consider it mission unaccomplished. Perhaps rather than Blue Ribbon panels being installed to stoke category diversity, the academy might want to think about opening things up to other colors (Green Ribbon, Yellow Ribbon, Orange Ribbon, you know, make it a rainbow coalition).
TV Academy chairman Dick Askin was fairly spit-roasted on Saturday by critics attending the summer Television Critics Assn. press tour confab, admitting that the "one-year test" designed to address chronic omissions will be revisited and reassessed (read: surely dumped).
Yes, the idea was to get attention for perpetual snubs like "Gilmore Girls" and Lauren Graham. What we wound up with was "Gilmore" and Graham still getting ignored -- and James Gandolfini, Edie Falco, Hugh Laurie and "Lost" joining them on the sidelines.
So, no, the experiment didn't work. But neither does misplaced retribution.

From the Guardian
Disney's pirates shatter records, despite critics
Mark Brown, arts correspondent
Tuesday July 25, 2006
The Guardian
It has had some lousy reviews, but the world cannot get enough of Pirates of the Caribbean. At the weekend it broke one box office record and by the end of the week should have broken another.
Figures released yesterday show that the action-comedy has now grossed $321.7m (£174m) in the US and Canada, the fastest film in history to pass $300m.
It is also the first film this year to top the charts for three weekends in a row, and Disney executives expect it to overtake Finding Nemo's final figure of $339.7m and become the company's most financially rewarding film ever.
Add on the $217m it has made outside north America, including $49m in Britain and Ireland, and dollar signs are rotating round the eyes of executives to the tune of $539m.
The film's success comes despite hardly anyone believing it is a great film. Critics have been harsh: the Observer called it "boring", the Daily Telegraph "arcane" and the Guardian "tortuous".
The one thing most are agreed on is that Johnny Depp's Keith Richards-like performance as Captain Jack Sparrow is very funny and carries the film. He is closely followed by an unrecognisable Bill Nighy as baddy Davy Jones.
Disney believe they are benefiting from water-cooler chat around the world. Chuck Viane, the company's president of distribution, said: "This is a testament to the positive word of mouth.
"When you're at this level of gross, you're reaching the people who only go to the movies once or twice a year."
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is currently the 16th most financially successful film and observers expect it to become only the seventh movie to top $400m. However, it has some way to go to beat the record set by Titanic of $600.8m.

From InTooDepp
Note from Kazren: The children's faces have been blurred out intentionally.

From CNN
'Dead Man's Chest' collects big treasure
'Pirates' sequel rides wave of success
Sunday, July 23, 2006; Posted: 5:20 p.m. EDT (21:20 GMT)
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Johnny Depp and his pirate friends are keeping all the box-office treasure for themselves.
Depp's "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" remained the top movie for the third straight weekend, hauling in $35 million and lifting its total to $321.7 million after just 17 days, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The Disney sequel passed the $305 million domestic total that its predecessor, 2003's "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," rang up during its entire six-month run.
"Dead Man's Chest" easily beat back a rush of new movies, which were led by Sony's family film "Monster House," a spooky animated tale that debuted at No. 2 with $23 million. The movie follows the adventures of a group of children at a mysterious neighbor's scary home.
Opening in third was M. Night Shyamalan's "Lady in the Water," an adult fairy tale from Warner Bros. that took in $18.2 million. Starring Paul Giamatti as an apartment manager who discovers a water nymph (Bryce Dallas Howard) living beneath his complex's swimming pool, the movie was the weakest debut for writer-director Shyamalan in a string of wide releases since 1999 that included the blockbusters "The Sixth Sense" and "Signs."
Kevin Smith's "Clerks II," a Weinstein Co. and MGM follow-up to his 1994 independent-film hit about two slackers on the job, premiered at No. 6 with $9.6 million.
Uma Thurman and Luke Wilson's "My Super Ex-Girlfriend," a 20th Century Fox comedy about a superhero taking revenge against the boyfriend who jilted her, debuted at No. 7 with $8.7 million.
Overall movie business rose, with the top 12 movies taking in $143.2 million, up 11 percent from the same weekend last year, when "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" was the No. 1 movie with $28.3 million.
Hollywood continued its modest rebound after a 2005 slump in which movie attendance fell 8 percent from the previous year's. So far this year, attendance is up 3.8 percent compared to 2005, according to box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations.
Summer attendance had been running slightly behind 2005's but now is 4 percent ahead because of a surge the past three weekends.
"That's really attributable to the strength of `Pirates of the Caribbean,' because that's when the tide turned," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations.
On its 16th day of release Saturday, "Dead Man's Chest" became the fastest movie to cross the $300 million mark, beating the previous best pace of 17 days set last year by "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith."
Within a week, "Dead Man's Chest" is expected to top the $339.7 million domestic take of "Finding Nemo" to become Disney's top-grossing movie.
"There are lots of plateaus for us to continue to strive for," said Chuck Viane, Disney's head of distribution.

Jan Perry has done more to promote JDOCD in her Cincinati Post articles! Check out the latest HERE
You go girl!

From Missy - Over at http://www.rick.com/ you can listen to Johnny on his top 40 radio show - it will be up on his site all week.

From Iron Grace found at Sea Coast Online
Seacoastonline.com
July 20, 2006
The Culling By D. Allan Kerr
The genius of Johnny Depp
The rulers of Disney are no doubt thrilled with the unprecedented success of installment No. 2 in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series – after pulling in the biggest weekend in box-office history this month, the movie is already the champion blockbuster of the year.
Well, good for Disney.
Even more remarkable is the associated phenomenon that seems to occur maybe once or twice in a generation: mainstream recognition (and appreciation) of genuine genius.
Yeah, I too tend to think “genius” is a term used far too liberally these days, and usually applied to the wrong people. For some reason, it’s often introduced as an excuse for obnoxious behavior by talented artists. When these people perform certain acts, they are described as tormented geniuses; if we were to do the same, we would be labeled “assholes.” I have this debate constantly with my kids about what actually constitutes genius and I don’t know if we’ve agreed on a definition yet. (Usually we apply it to the writers behind “The Simpsons” or some forgotten musician.)
But generally speaking, it seems most who are deserving of this title are only anointed by a relatively small, enlightened portion of the population, and even then only after suffering years of obscurity and hardship. What Johnny Depp has done here is inspiring — instead of sacrificing himself on the public altar to win over the masses, he has brought the masses to him.
He created something so original and with such panache that the entire world not only has to pay attention to it, they can’t get enough of it.
By now the media has left little doubt Depp’s inventive portrayal of Capt. Jack Sparrow is the primary reason for the success of the “Pirates” films.
I’m sure the casting of an exquisite Keira Knightley didn’t hurt, and there are other memorable performances as well, but Johnny’s the one with whom we want to share the ride. He famously based his interpretation of Sparrow as a cross between rock legend Keith Richards and cartoon idol Pepe LePeu and came up with a character more appealing than any other actor around could have invented. In fact, Depp’s achievement may simply seem remarkable because there’s such a shortage of inventive, daring and charismatic movie stars these days.
Guys like Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise will be remembered as the box-office kings of their era, but 30 years from now will people look back and say, “Wow, could those guys ACT?” I happen to like Hanks — he seems like a very sweet guy and a solid actor. But I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that spark of genius leap from the screen during his movies, with the possible exception of “Big.” Even then, I have to think part of his appeal in that role was the wide-eyed innocence he carried back then.
The genius of Johnny Depp is that when you’re watching him on the screen you don’t know what he’s going to do next. It might be a roguish smile at an unexpected moment, it may be an inflection of speech that catches you off guard. He has a comic flair that invites you to root for him even when his character is decidedly unheroic. He brings to his characters a humanity that convinces audiences they are watching a true-to-life, quirks-and-all character, and not a performer playing a role.
By now, having recently graced the covers of Newsweek and Rolling Stone magazines, having delivered a movie that will generate zillions of dollars, Johnny’s Jack Sparrow (CAPTAIN Jack Sparrow) has already been over-scrutinized. Everyone by now has heard how Disney executives panicked when they saw the direction Johnny was taking his character. (“Is he supposed to be gay?” they asked. “Is he drunk?”) And volumes have already been written about his starring “outsider” roles in movies like “Edward Scissorhands” and “Ed Wood.” But perhaps a more telling illustration lies in a film in which Depp is not even the main character.
Depp had a hell of a year in 2003 — not only did he introduce Sparrow in the first “Pirates” movie, he also appeared in Robert Rodriguez’ “Once Upon a Time in Mexico” as the darkly hilarious but sociopathic CIA agent Sands.
In a film that featured actors at least as beautiful as Depp — Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Eva Mendes – and a rogues gallery of scene stealers like Mickey Rourke, Willem Dafoe and Cheech Marin, Depp absolutely stole the show. I sat there amazed at what I was seeing, and even today can’t think of many instances in which a supporting player performed a similar hijacking of a film. (Philip Seymour Hoffman comes close as the comic sidekick in the otherwise mediocre 2004 “Along Came Polly.” Worth watching if only to see a master thief at work.)
I suppose in the world of theater you’re not SUPPOSED to take the spotlight from the main characters, but in this instance Depp was, again, the most fascinating thing in the movie. The film is the final chapter in Rodriguez’ “Mariachi” trilogy, but Depp gave it the extra juice it needed. In one scene his character (an undercover CIA agent who wears a T-shirt with the letters CIA printed on the front – for Cleavage Inspection Agency) tells Banderas the slow-roasted pork he has just eaten is so good he has to kill the cook, in order to restore balance to the country. He then walks into the kitchen and does just that.
And still you love the guy.
He coolly guns down the Cheech Marin character and a waitress who accidentally blew his cover. Then as he tries to drag Marin’s body out of the restaurant, he looks around with an exasperated expression and says, “A little help?”
And you’re still loving the guy.
He manipulates other characters in the movie, playing one side against the other; plots the overthrow of a legitimate Mexican government, and tries to persuade a young boy selling bubble gum from his bicycle to shoot someone in the head. But he does it all with such devilish joy on his angelic face that when horrible things ultimately happen to him you’re rooting for the guy to come out on top.
In a barroom one night I went on a tirade about our current lack of Marlon Brandos, the actor I most associate with the “genius” tag. A friend challenged me, asked what was so special about Brando, and I had my answer ready.
It’s a scene from “On the Waterfront,” in which Brando’s washed-up prizefighter Terry Malloy is walking through a playground with Eva Marie Saint. At one point Saint drops her glove and Brando, while speaking, picks it up. Saint holds out her hand to take the glove back, but Brando nonchalantly pulls it on over his rough fighter’s hand while continuing his dialogue. Through that one gesture we see the child-like gentleness within his character’s tough-guy exterior. But something in the way Saint holds her hand out for a moment and then lowers it to her side suggests the moment is unscripted, and according to Hollywood lore that’s just what happened:
Brando saw a moment and instinctively seized it. Whether it’s true or not doesn’t really matter — the scene LOOKS unscripted and spontaneous, and therefore real.
That’s the mark of a genius; someone who can see something small and brilliant, something no one else can see, and turn it into something special. It’s fitting that Brando — who co-starred with Depp in the 1995 romantic comedy “Don Juan DeMarco” — was a friend and mentor to the younger man before his death, because Depp appears to be a similar one-of-a-kind talent.
And when so many people at one time recognize an artistic achievement on such a grand scale, well, that’s a cause for celebration. If only it would happen more often.

From the Sydney Morning Herald
A vicious fop - and a pearl of a Rochester
July 22, 2006
Johnny Depp swaps his Caribbean pirate for a depraved, yet lovable, British bard.
JOHNNY DEPP IS one of the great Hollywood stories: the untrained teen heart-throb who turned out to be one of the truly serious, committed and brilliant screen actors of our era; the bad boy turned good; the romantic adventurer who finally met the right woman - French singer and actress Vanessa Paradis, with whom he has two children - and settled down, just as romantically, in the Provencale countryside.
Before Paradis, his life was pure rock'n'roll - full of drink and drugs and the sort of appalling behaviour that, at a distance, is quite thrilling. Especially, of course, when the miscreant has the face of a fallen angel.
It's true that Depp doesn't say much, especially small stuff. Depp has stuff to say, we suspect, but not necessarily now. Interviews with Depp tend to pass, in fact, in a blur of smoke and mumbles. He usually says the same things, probably because he has found they work. Goodness knows, for example, how many times he has confided that he likes nothing quite so much as playing Barbies with his seven-year-old daughter, Lily-Rose. That is not to say it's not true or not endearing. There is, of course, that extraordinary beauty working for him, too. It is beauty of the kind fixed forever on the side of Keats's Grecian urn. It makes you draw breath when you see it.
It is his work, however, that speaks of his intelligence - that tells us all we need to know about him, really. There are the left-field film choices: Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Before Night Falls and the new film The Libertine. There are the strong personal relationships with directors of a certain passionate stamp for whom he has worked repeatedly: Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, Robert Rodriguez. There are the films he decided not to do: Speed, Legends of the Fall. There are those luminous, meticulously finessed performances.
There is also the Depp attitude, which remains that of the intelligent rebel. He was "delighted", according to Rolling Stone, when studio executives worried as they saw his Captain Jack Sparrow unfolding in the first Pirates of the Caribbean, a nervy, theatrical persona based, as we now know, on the real-life peculiarities of Keith Richards. That was as it should be. If the suits aren't worried about him, Depp worries himself.
This month Depp returned to the screen as Captain Sparrow in Dead Man's Chest, the first of two Pirates of the Caribbean sequels for which he has reputedly been paid $US37 million ($49 million). The unexpected success of the first Pirates film, The Curse of the Black Pearl, catapulted him into the ranks of top earners.
The Libertine is the latest of Depp's many cinematic adventures. The libertine in question is John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, born in 1647, dead not much more than 30 years later of syphilis, a poet of considerable genius whose hunger for excess and experience was dazzling even by Restoration standards. The work of a first-time British director, Laurence Dunmore, and based on Stephen Jeffreys's play, it was in fact completed two years ago - before Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - after a long, halting gestation. Some reviewers have been annoyed by its affectations: the sepia colour palette that reduces everything to gloom, the fog that swirls through every scene, Rochester's surreal moments of orgiastic visions.
The Libertine certainly isn't perfect. The last third of the film, describing Rochester's decline into exile and disease, is as "dour and maundering" as The New Yorker says it is. Yet Depp's vicious, vulgar fop and man of letters is never less than arresting, especially as he tangles with the aspiring actress he coached and somehow loved, Elizabeth Barry, played by the sublime Samantha Morton.
Rochester might not have paid his tailor, but he is seen to have a kind of honour, even purity, bound up with his fidelity to his art. Depp is absolutely convincing in this and in Rochester's compulsion to defy authority, as encapsulated in the person of Charles II. It is also entirely understandable that the king, played with a cool detachment by John Malkovich, should want to forgive him. Depp, the 21st-century artist and rebel, his aristocratic vowels perfect and his sinning fingers black with London grime between the diamond rings, is more on form than ever.
It is tempting, obviously, to imagine Depp wanted to play a version of his own story: the dissipation, the desperation in the drinking, the longing for a soulmate. Depp has said he was smoking by the time he was 12, having sex at 13 and doing every drug you've heard of by 14. At 16 he left home and lived in a car with one of his friends. He had pretty bad friends. So did Rochester. Rochester was only 14 when he wrote an obscene poem wishing he could be turned into sperm.
But it would be a mistake to try to draw parallels that are too exact. These lives might be alike in some ways, but we need not know exactly how. The work can speak for itself. And Depp, meanwhile, doesn't speak too much at all.

Thanks to Syakura for this info - a new illustrated biography by Nick Johnstone is out.

From Leslie found at the Asheville Citizen Times
Crazy for Johnny or Jack?
Depp connects with fans in unique 'Pirates' role
by By Anthony Breznican, USA TODAY
Who is the bigger box-office champ: Johnny Depp or his fictional alter ego Jack Sparrow?
As Hollywood's eyeballs bulge over the $135.6 million debut weekend of "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" - the biggest opening ever - some fans say they turned out for the actor, but others say it may be the character driving those ticket sales.
Otherwise, says David Poland of MovieCityNews. com, Depp films such as the little-seen "The Libertine" and the respected but modestly performing "Finding Neverland" and "Secret Window" would have been mega-blockbusters.
"There are people out there who love 'Pirates' but don't like Johnny Depp, particularly, and don't have an interest in seeing him in other things, but they like this particular character," Poland says. "And there are other people who go to see every Johnny Depp thing. And then there are people who will now go see Depp's other movies because of this."
Depp is crucial to the movie's success, but "you can't sell him in something people don't want to see," Poland says.
Whatever the case, Depp's Sparrow is getting the credit for this huge debut, from both audiences and the film's studio, Disney. A survey from online ticket-seller Fandango found 63 percent of audiences said Depp was a main factor in their decision to see the movie.
Depp has acknowledged that he sometimes clicks with fans and sometimes doesn't. "You should be pushing yourself to the absolute brink of failure, in terms of like, 'Boy, if this don't work, it's going to be real bad. And if it does work, it might be great,'" he said before the movie opened.
With the two "Pirates" films and last summer's blockbuster "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," Depp's idiosyncratic performances hit the right note with mainstream audiences.
Cathy Dee of Fort Wayne, Ind., wasn't a Depp fan before the original "Pirates." But she's crazy for Sparrow. "That he was able to make his character so interesting and watchable told me he was something special," she says.
Laremy Legel of Seattle says, "I am a fan because he generally chooses interesting roles. They don't always work out, but I like the effort, at least. I didn't rent any Depp movies this weekend because Captain Jack Sparrow is his best character and I'd already seen that a couple times during the weekend."
This latest success probably will bolster Depp's ability to take on other curious, less commercial characters. He is finishing the third "Pirates" for next Memorial Day and is considering starring in the movie version of the Broadway musical "Sweeney Todd." He has long wanted to make the drama "Shantaram," about an escaped Australian prisoner in India seeking redemption.
"Pirates" producer Jerry Bruckheimer says Depp and Sparrow touched a nerve because "audiences love surprises."
"When you think of pirates, you think of 'Arrr!' and Long John Silver and eyepatches and hooks and peg legs. He didn't do any of that, but took it in a different direction," Bruckheimer says. "That's why you hire him."

From Joy found in In Touch magazine.

According to Video Detectives, The DVD of Dead Man's Chest will be released November 1st in the US.

Two stories from Emma
'Pirates' sails off with foreign box office honors
Mon Jul 17, 2006 12:44 AM ET

By Frank Segers
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" easily claimed the No. 1 spot internationally for the second weekend and appears on its way to surpassing "Finding Nemo" to become the biggest overseas smash in Walt Disney Co. history.
The weekend tally for "Dead Man's Chest" was an estimated $58 million from 24 territories.
Having played only a third of the total overseas marketplace, "Dead Man's Chest" already has accumulated $125 million. A half-dozen markets will open up next weekend including Japan, the biggest overseas territory for the Hollywood majors.
"For us, this is the type of movie that doesn't come along very often," said Mark Zoradi, president of Buena Vista International, Disney's foreign distribution arm.
He predicted that "Dead Man's Chest" would surpass "Nemo," a 2003 Pixar/Disney animated film, which grossed $525 million internationally.
The Japan bow will follow a promotional blitz involving co-stars Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom and producer Jerry Bruckheimer. A similar blitz also will precede the film's France opening in two weeks.
Zoradi said "Dead Man's Chest" has a "cast and (story) idea that is global in nature. It plays as well in Korea, New Zealand and the U.K. as it does in Los Angeles or New York." He added that the general market backdrop -- lack of World Cup soccer distractions, warm weather mixed with school summer vacations -- will churn "Dead Man's Chest" into a "worldwide phenomenon at the box office."
This weekend, the film blew away the competition in the markets it played, often notching industry records.
In Russia, the tally was the biggest in market history, an estimated $10.4 million. The big surprise was the opening numbers in Turkey ($1.5 million) and in Ukraine (an estimated $1 million).
Combined with its domestic tally to date, "Dead Man's Chest" has secured $383.2 million at the worldwide box office. (Disney spent some $450 million to make the film and a third edition in the "Pirates" series, "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," due May 25.)
Bolstered by a dozen new openings, "Superman Returns" finished No. 2 this weekend with an estimated $38 million from 36 markets, lifting its international total to $77 million ($240.6 million worldwide). The Warner Bros. picture debuted at No. 1 in Spain, Mexico, France, Brazil, Hong Kong, Belgium and Switzerland and opened strongly in the U.K. with an estimated $7.8 million.
Finishing in the No. 3 spot was DreamWorks Animation's durable "Over the Hedge," which yielded an estimated $14.1 million from 44 territories, lifting its international tally to $82.2 million.
Fourth place went to Pixar/Disney's animated outing "Cars," with an estimated $10 million from 30 markets, for an overseas gross of $82 million. The biggest market was Spain where the film finished No. 2 with $2.2 million for a market total of $7 million.
The fifth spot was claimed by "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift," which debuted in Germany, Austria and Italy and pulled an overall weekend tally of $7.3 million from 28 territories. The international total stands at $42 million ($112 million worldwide).
"Mission: Impossible III" extracted an estimated $3.9 million in its second Japan weekend, lifting its international total to $229 million. "The Da Vinci Code" pulled $2.6 million from 58 territories. The international total stands at an imposing $520.8 million ($735.7 million worldwide).
Coinciding with its No. 2 bow in North America, the comedy "Little Man," also opened at No. 2 in Australia with an estimated $1.2 million.
"The Break-Up" lifted its international total to $24.5 million (worldwide, $140.5 million) with an estimated $1.4 million weekend in 18 markets. "United 93" flew off with $1.5 million in 11 territories, for an overseas total of $10.7 million.
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

Variety
Posted: Sun., Jul. 16, 2006, 4:28pm PT
'Pirates' rides high seas abroad
Disney pic proves int'l kryptonite
By DAVE MCNARY

It's definitely the pirates' world, as "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" easily topped "Superman Returns" at the foreign box office with $58 million at 3,336 playdates in 24 markets.
Disney's blockbuster sequel launched in 17 new markets and finished first everywhere, lifting its foreign cume to $125 million with openings still to come in 65% of international markets. "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" has a worldwide total of $383.2 million.
"Pirates" came in 52% ahead of "Superman Returns," which grossed a respectable $38 million from 6,000 prints in 36 markets as Warner Bros. more than tripled the print count.
"Pirates" easily beat the Man of Steel in head-to-head competition with its second frame in the U.K., winning by 54% with $12 million at 514 engagements over "Superman Returns," with $7.8 million at 479 -- the top-grossing territory for both pics. "Pirates" declined 43% from its launch weekend, pushing the Brit cume to $50 million.
"Pirates" openings totaled $29.4 million, 40% above the record set by "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" for launches in the same 17 markets and more than double the openings for "Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl" in those markets in 2003.
"Pirates" plundered the red-hot Russian market with a record launch of $10 million at 530, more than $2 million better than the previous mark set by "Ice Age: The Meltdown." It also set opening records in Singapore with $1.8 million at 65, in Malaysia with $1.1 million at 70 and in the Ukraine with $1 million at 125.
"Pirates" posted the second-best launches of all time in half a dozen other markets -- Sweden with $3.4 million at 125, Denmark with $2.6 million at 80, Holland with $2.3 million at 114, Norway with $2 million at 100, Turkey with $1.5 million at 150 and Finland with $1.4 million at 69, which may tie for best opening.
Holdover "Pirates" biz stayed strong in Australia with a 35% decline to $5.5 million at 280; it saw five times the biz of the third frame of "Superman Returns." Despite its reputation as a fast-burn market, South Korean grosses fell just 38% to $4.4 million at 420, or six times better than the third weekend of "Superman Returns."
"These results show that 'Pirates of the Caribbean' is clearly a worldwide idea that works in every market," said BVI prez Mark Zoradi. "And it really expands in the public mind what a Disney movie is."
BVI held off on going day-and-date with the sequel in all but seven markets, due to competition from the World Cup. It's launching next weekend in Japan and Latin America, followed by a July 27 opening in Germany.
Except for the U.K., Warner aimed its "Superman Returns" launches at markets untouched by "Pirates" and posted its second-biggest bow in Mexico, with a first-place, $5.2 million from 758 prints, good for 59% of the market and the distrib's third-best opening after the last two "Harry Potter" pics. Spain followed with $5.1 million at 560, on par with "Mission: Impossible III."
"Superman Returns" led in France, with $4.1 million at 645, 41% ahead of "Batman Returns"; in Brazil, with $2.8 million at 460 in the fourth-biggest Warners launch; in Hong Kong, with $1.4 million at 62; in Colombia, with $809,000 at 96; in Chile, with $397,000 at 68 and in Belgium, with $373,000.
The frame lifted "Superman Returns' " foreign cume to $77 million and its worldwide total to $240 million. Key remaining openings for the pricey tentpole include Scandinavia on July 28, Germany and Japan in mid-August and Italy in September.
With "Pirates" and "Superman" battling it out, overall international biz bounced back smartly from the monthlong World Cup chill. The frame easily outperformed the same weekend of 2005, when "Madagascar" led with $31 million, edging the third frame of "War of the Worlds" with $30 million.
And the performance of "Pirates" portends a continued rebound from last year, with offshore biz on track to eclipse 2004's record of $8.5 billion cume for the Hollywood majors. "Pirates" also became the seventh pic of 2006 to cross the $100 million mark in foreign grosses, joining "The Da Vinci Code," "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," "Ice Age: The Meltdown," "X-Men: The Last Stand" and "MI3."
A pair of family-friendly CGI toons -- UIP's "Over the Hedge" and BVI's "Cars" -- stayed solid contributors. "Hedge" grossed $14.1 million at 4,457 locations in 44 markets, mostly from soph seshes, led by Germany with $2.5 million at 720, down 41%; Mexico, with $1.8 million at 387, down 37%; the U.K., with $1.7 million, down 58%; and France, with $1.5 million at 740, off 40%.
"Cars" followed with $10 million at 4,841 in 31 markets, led by its second Spanish frame with $2.2 million at 550, down 33%, and its third Japanese weekend with $1.4 million, down 44%. "Hedge" and "Cars" both have hit $82 million in overseas grosses.
UIP's "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" showed respectable traction with $7.3 million at 1,400 playdates in 28 markets -- half of that coming from its first-place launch in Germany with $3.6 million at 409 for 40% market share. It also opened in first in Italy with $900,000 at 161 and in Austria with $600,000 at 64.
"Drift" has cumed $42 million overseas and $112 million worldwide, with launches next weekend in France, Korea and Spain.
Japan's soph sesh of "Mission: Impossible III" declined 24% to $3.9 million at 752, lifting the foreign cume to $228.9 million and the worldwide total to $362 million. Pic is expected to open in its final market, China, later this month.
"Poseidon," Warner's other summer tentpole, stayed lukewarm with $3 million from 3,100 prints in 51 markets for a foreign cume of $107.2 million and worldwide total of $167 million.
Sony's ninth weekend of "The Da Vinci Code" still showed moderate drawing power with $2.6 million at 2,270 in 58 markets, pushing foreign cume to $520.8 million and worldwide total to $736 million.
UIP's "United 93" continued its modest foreign performance with $1.5 million at 638, including a third-place French opening with $800,000 at 225 and an Italian soph sesh of $325,000 at 180.
U's "The Break-Up" took in $1.4 million at 1,000 in 18 markets to raise its foreign take to $24.5 million; it opens this coming weekend in the U.K.
Sony's day-and-date launch of "Little Man" in Australia came in second with $1.18 million at 165.

From Leslie found at IF Magazine
Exclusive Interview: PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN STAR JOHNNY DEPP LIVES A PIRATES' LIFE EVEN OFF CAMERA
Talented actor talks about staying in character with his kids, Keith Richards as a dad, and French films
By: EMMANUEL ITIER
      Contributing Writer
It’s a PIRATES life for actor Johnny Depp who after doing a round of publicity is back to the set of the third PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movie, AT WORLD’S END. Depp’s popular character Captain Jack Sparrow has created legions of new fans for the actor, and spawned an animatronics replica in the actual PIRATES ride at Disneyland.   During his gauntlet with the press Depp talked with iF about playing Jack Sparrow, what his kids think of his line of work, and what sort of projects he would like to do on next.
iF MAGAZINE: You make your comic pratfalls look easy and effortless but this isn’t easy and effortless. How do you get the timing so right and how hard do you have to work in making these falls look accidental and comic?
JOHNNY DEPP: Oh boy. That’s the key. How do you keep it fresh? How do you keep it working? For me, there’s a real fine art to the timing that I’m still working on because you go back and watch guys like Chaplin and Keaton or even in the dramatic roles, Lon Chaney. The timing, especially in those silent films is just astonishing. But also in today’s cinema, timing can be helped or hindered by editing. So I don’t know. I just sort of do my best.
iF: Speaking of timing, what did you think when you heard about Keith Richards falling out of the palm tree, and were you concerned that he might not be able to star in PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END?
DEPP: I thought that was bad timing. But it solidified my belief that he would be the perfect father for Captain Jack. Initially we were all super-worried – “My God, what has he done?” But being in touch with his people, his camp, I know that he’s doing fine and it was a momentary lapse and he’s back on the road soon and totally cool.
iF: You were at the launch of the new revamped Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. How weird was it for your kids seeing a robotic impersonating their dad as Jack Sparrow? How much did your kids contribute to your decision to do PIRATES?
DEPP: My kids were as excited as I was to see the animatronics figures at Disneyland. Yeah, they were pretty freaked out by that, as was I. Again, talking about timing being everything, right around the time I was offered PIRATES, there was no script, no story at all, no characters, no nothing. At the time my daughter was two-and-a-half, three years old, so I’d spent those three years watching nothing but those Disney animated features from way back or old Tex Avery cartoons and tons and tons of animated stuff. Which was unbelievably helpful for me because through that time [watching the cartoons] I became obsessed with the notion that these cartoon characters, these animated characters didn’t have to play by the same rules as we did in live action cinema. The boundaries were quite wide and the parameters were really stretched out so they could fly around a lot more, and also the notion that a three-year-old could sit there and watch these characters with a 40-year-old and a 75-year-old and all walk away with the same experience, that universal thing, so you become a child again. I would say more than anything that was the main ingredient in Captain Jack for me.
iF: Is there any truth to the rumor that you’re going to play INXS singer Michael Hutchence in a film?
DEPP: It actually isn’t, it’s not true. But the funny thing is someone sent that to me and I read it and thought, “Wow, that’s kind of interesting because no one ever approached me about it.” I don’t think I’d be the guy to play Michael. I knew him pretty well and I think you’d need someone a little more, well, he was pretty broad Michael. He was a kind of a glam guy, like a god, like a shaman. I don’t think I’d be the guy.
iF: What about playing a young Keith Richards?
DEPP: Now that would be fun.
iF: We’ve heard you stay in character when you shoot the film. Does that make your interaction different with your kids when they’re with you on set?
DEPP: Well put it this way, it’s not that you stay in character, but because you’ve spent the majority of your day as that character, there is some let’s say residue by the time you get home. I’d get home and say [in Jack Sparrow voice], “Alright kids, everything alright?” And they’d say, “Dad, come on, I’m watching SPIDER-MAN.” To say they were used to it is a very kind way of putting it.
iF: So Tobey Maguire is a hero in your house?
DEPP: Oh man, SPIDER-MAN, JUSTICE LEAGUE. My boy has now gone into that full-on superhero phase. But I refuse to wear the tights.
iF: If you had Jack’s compass, which direction would it be pointing?
DEPP: It would be pointing wherever my family is.
iF: What was your initial reaction when Disney executives panicked on first seeing dailies of your Jack Sparrow during the first movie, asking “Is he drunk, is he gay?”
DEPP: This is totally irresponsible of me, but I thought it was hilarious. I really got a kick out of it because they were so worried, they were so freaked out, and it was so serious. And there were moments when you were in a very quiet sort of story situation, and you just go [trying to hold in laughter] "I lost myself, I went crazy.” It got close you know. They were definitely considering giving me the boot and I was okay with that really. But I really felt like I had a handle on the character and I knew what I was doing and that they had to trust me or fire me. And they didn’t fire me.
iF: And how was it kissing Keira Knightley?
DEPP: Oh the smooch. Well those things are always so awkward especially because Keira and I have never been in that kind of situation together. She’s three and I’m a thousand. I’m Methuselah and she’s a toddler. There was that, but more than anything, we’ve known each other for a couple of years and suddenly it was, “Are you ready for this?” And you just kind of do it. It becomes more like a stunt in a way. “Where’s my double?” She was a great sport about it. She was really sweet.
iF: You might be a thousand, but you have this childlike quality about you. Where does that come from?
DEPP: It’s probably ignorance. I might just be really dumb, I don’t know. What keeps you a child more than anything is your kids, hanging around your kids, watching them experience things for the first time, seeing new things, watching them develop smarts about various things and seeing their imaginations bloom and flower. That’s the key to all of it for me. Just the miracle of saving a drawing they made when they were three years old and looking at one they made when they were four, there’s a vast difference in that. And then up to six and seven and it’s like, “I’m raising Picasso.”
iF: Can you talk about why you’re so comfortable living in France?
DEPP: Well it’s a beautiful culture. It’s an absolutely perfect kind of culture, steeped in history, fascinating in that way. I’ve always been a real history fiend and, also on a personal level, I’m not sure that art in cinema is possible any more in Hollywood. But in Europe there’s a real regard for the filmmaker and the writer, the product too sure, the end result. But they respect authors, painters, filmmakers, film, and creativity. They celebrate it. And the wine is pretty good.
iF: Was 21 JUMP STREET the real turning point in your career?
DEPP: That was a very important learning experience for me. That three and a half or four years I spent on JUMP STREET was my college, my schooling. It was great training, being in front of the camera five days a week, seven to nine months out of the year. You learn a lot about the process, cameras, lenses, lights; very good training. But the other thing that was very important for me was a situation that I was very uncomfortable with, the fact that they had turned my image of this character I was playing and sold it to the masses as me. This ball was rolling and it was greasy and I couldn’t get a hold of it, I couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t do anything, say anything. I just had to behave and be that guy for them. So as miserable an experience as that was for me it was actually instrumental in deciding where I would go after that. After I was out of that contract, I swore to myself I would never be that again, I would never let anyone do that to me.
iF: So you went off and made CRY-BABY with John Waters.
DEPP: CRY-BABY was the first sort of catapult out of that. They wanted me to go this way and I decided, “No, no, no, get John Waters over here.”
iF: What is it like working with Chow Yun Fat on PIRATES 3?
DEPP: I think once we get into the ring, no matter where you’re from, everyone has their own process, everyone has a different approach to the work. I knew he was a good actor obviously, I’d seen him in CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON and I knew his work was terrific. More than that, I was really impressed with who he is as a human, as a guy. He’s very down to earth, a lot of fun. Probably the best way to describe the guy is adorable. He’s a super-sweet, very together, very centered man. I was really pleased to get to know him.
iF: How’s your French now? Might we see you speaking French in a French movie some time soon?
DEPP: It’s all right here and there. I can get through a conversation. I did a film a couple of years ago, right after SECRET WINDOW, IILS SE MARIERENT ET EURENT BEAUCOUP D’ENFANTS with Yvan Attal. I didn’t see the movie to be honest. But he’s a filmmaker I like very much, he’s very talented and there are great possibilities for the future; so if I did a movie in French I would definitely feel comfortable doing it with Yvan. Patrice Leconte is terrific too, going back to THE HAIRDRESSER’S HUSBAND, and I thought his work with Vanessa [Paradis] in THE GIRL ON THE BRIDGE was stellar. He’s another one I’d very much like to work with. Of course the people I’d love to have worked with are people like Jean Gabin, Louis De Funes. I loved De Funes. I think he’s one of the greatest actors of all time.
iF: Are you celebrating France’s magnificent victory today in the World Cup?
DEPP: I just heard about that. The last time I followed the World Cup was in 1998 and it was only because I had a standing bet with Hunter S. Thompson about the outcome. And it was the only time -- and I’ll say it as many times as I can because I’m so proud -- it was the only time I ever won a bet with Hunter.
iF: We know you based the character in the first film on Keith Richards. What did he have to say about that and what else did you bring to Jack this time?
DEPP: Well I was scared. But his reaction was terrific. He was very supportive and has been ever since. When we were hanging out together before I did PIRATES, it wasn’t like I told him, “I’m sponging parts of your soul.” So he was great about it. And what am I bringing to this version of Captain Jack. Basically he’s the same guy. There’s a purity to the character. We’ve seen him panic, we’ve seen him on the run but this is the first time we’ve really seen him in mortal fear, really afraid for his life. Once Davy Jones says, “Time’s up, you’ve got to pay up”, there’s real panic there and he knows the clock is ticking, so that’s what I was trying to do.

From the Baltimore Sun
Depp delves into the stories behind his characters
By Michael Sragow
Sun Movie Critic
Originally published July 14, 2006
It's tempting, as some have done, to call Johnny Depp the king of the weirdo actors -- and God knows, with charmless, bizarro turns like his Michael Jackson-esque Willy Wonka, he has on occasion laid claim to the title. But if his performances were merely odd for oddness' sake, like the dressed-up ham served by declining greats such as Marlon Brando or Rod Steiger, they wouldn't connect so zingily with the audience. Throughout Depp's career, his approach to acting has balanced "fun" and aesthetic risk-taking, outlandish imagination and emotional reality.
Anyone surprised at Depp's outre buccaneer Jack Sparrow in his Pirates of the Caribbean movies probably never saw his astonishingly fey Ichabod Crane in Tim Burton's 1999 smash Sleepy Hollow. As a progressive 1799 policeman exiled from New York and ordered to test his theories of deduction on a series of horrific beheadings, Depp combined intellect and swooning effeminacy to dazzling effect. He molded himself into a male ingenue who mixed the aura of a tortured poet with the unisex glamour of late Carnaby Street.
In interviews, he jokingly admitted that his version of Crane was "keenly in touch with his feminine side" and was less a traditional male hero than "a fragile young girl." But, as with Sparrow (at least in the first Pirates movie), he brought this bizarre concoction an authority and humor that commanded respect. He knew (as he told a '99 news conference) that "even if you're playing a heightened character and living inside a heightened reality, you can still apply your own truths to those characters."
Part of that meant that even if he wasn't conventionally romantic, he still got the girl. It was Depp doing what he does best: Trying to make an old character "interesting and different, and push him as far as you can go. Where you're just on the verge of 'believable' and 'not-so-believable,' and quite possibly almost bad acting."
For Crane, he listed a half-dozen influences -- the "energy and righteousness" of Angela Lansbury, the "drive" of Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes and the horror-movie posturing of Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.
But his primal approach to character went beyond these follow-the-dot connections. For Crane, he added "the ethereal quality" of his late friend Roddy McDowall, and tapped into his own melancholy as well.
Depp famously drew on Keith Richards for Sparrow -- and Richards will play Sparrow's dad in the third Pirates movie. In the current Rolling Stone, Depp also credits his wide reading in pirate lore for some of Sparrow, such as a study called Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition ("I wasn't exactly going for that with the character. ... It was more that I liked the idea of being ambiguous") and a book by a French sailor who said that he'd keep going as a sailor "because the horizon is always there." In fact, he mined that idea for the first film's last line, "Now, bring on that horizon."
But Depp's own funny-sadness percolated, albeit in a blissfully cartoonish way, throughout Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. It inspired Orlando Bloom's best moments, too: Learning Sparrow had been left in the hot sun on a desert island for days, Bloom mimed Depp's full range of woozy expressions and tottering steps. Suddenly, both Depp's performance and Bloom's made sense -- if Bloom's straight arrow Will Turner could empathize with Sparrow as damaged goods, perhaps he was man enough for Keira Knightley's feisty Lizzie. It's that kind of connection that's completely lost in the overscaled high jinks of Dead Man's Chest.
In his own burlesque fashion, Sparrow represents not just the charming rogue, but the cagey fighter fearlessly coming back from a rocky past -- like Depp himself, who confessed to Rolling Stone, "When I was a kid, my parents went through a nasty divorce and [drugs] was the direction I went in for a while. At the time, it was more self-medicating. It never had anything to do with fun for me."
When I read that, something tingled in the back of my mind. I remembered Depp uses the same words on the DVD of The Libertine to describe the alcoholism of the debauched antihero he plays in that wretched movie: it's "self-medication," not "fun." As an insight into a certain kind of addiction, it isn't earth-shattering, but as a sign of an actor's ability to expose an intimate part of his personal history in even the most far-out characterization, it's tremendously moving

From CNN
Johnny Depp a box office magnet
'He set it apart,' says producer of star's 'Pirates' performance
Tuesday, July 11, 2006; Posted: 11:09 a.m. EDT (15:09 GMT)
NEW YORK (AP) -- Who knew a good Keith Richards impression could be so lucrative?
"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," which earned a record haul of $135.6 million in its opening weekend, is a sequel full of special effects, plot twists and pretty heartthrobs.
But it's Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow -- the drunken buccaneer famously modeled on the Rolling Stones' Richards -- who may have propelled "Pirates" to the all-time largest opening box-office gross. It bested 2002's "Spider-Man," which took in $114.8 million in its first weekend.
It's an unusual mainstream success for Depp, whose career has been mostly marked by Tim Burton's cultish films ("Ed Wood," "Edward Scissorhands") and financial disappointments like 2004's "Finding Neverland" or 2000's "Chocolat."
"I'm proud of those films and even though I've had a career of basically doing failures, or commercial failures, it never felt that way to me," Depp told The Associated Press in a recent interview.
In the 2003 original, Depp's cartoonish pirate was a revelation. Few expected a blatantly commercial movie based on a Disney theme park ride to result in an Oscar nomination for Depp.
"I was never opposed to the idea of commercial success, in terms of a movie or whatever, but if it was gonna happen it had to happen the right way, it had to happen kind of on my terms," the 43-year-old actor said.
The reviews for "Dead Man's Chest" have not been what they were for "The Curse of the Black Pearl," but Depp -- who's displayed his idiosyncratic, unpredictable skills in such movies as "Benny & Joon," "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" and "Don Juan DeMarco" -- was still clearly a great draw for moviegoers.
"He set it apart," the film's producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, told the AP. "Disney movies prior to `Pirates' were for young kids. When you put his name on it, people go, 'Wait a minute, there's something strange here. We better check this out.' "
The first "Pirates" movie was a surprise hit in 2003, yielding $305 million domestically -- easily Depp's biggest box-office success. His off-kilter portrayal of Willy Wonka in last year's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" also pulled in a respectable $206 million in the U.S.
Since a third "Pirates" movie was filmed at the same time as the sequel, Depp (who stars alongside Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley) will likely continue to add to his newfound clout as not just a well-regarded actor, but a bankable movie star -- an increasingly endangered species in today's Hollywood.
"With this quirky characterization, he still has maintained his complete artistic credibility while appearing in maybe the most commercial movie of all time, given this opening record," says Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations. "So he's enjoying the best of both worlds."
The impact of "Pirates" has already moved Hollywood's 2006 numbers, which have been much scrutinized after last year's dramatic downturn. The nearly 20 million moviegoers who flocked to see it over the weekend helped put the year's total attendance figures at about 3.5 percent better than last year's. Before "Pirates" came out, that number was closer to just 2 percent.
"Psychologically, for Hollywood, this is very important," says Dergarabedian. "But we still need to see big hits coming down the pipeline. You can't just rest on one film, but this is a great place to start."
The "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise also has attained that hallmark of the big time: pornography spoof. The new adult film "Pirates" (clearly styled after "Pirates of the Caribbean") claims to be the most expensive adult film ever made.

From the Telegram
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Depp seen as key to ‘Pirates’ success
By Jake Coyle THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK— Who knew a good Keith Richards impression could be so lucrative?
“Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” which earned a record haul of $135.6 million in its opening weekend, is a sequel full of special effects, plot twists and pretty heartthrobs.
But it’s Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow — the drunken buccaneer famously modeled on the Rolling Stones’ Richards — who may have propelled “Pirates” to the all-time largest opening box-office gross. It bested 2002’s “Spider-Man,” which took in $114.8 million in its first weekend.
It’s an unusual mainstream success for Depp, whose career has been mostly marked by Tim Burton’s cultish films (“Ed Wood,” “Edward Scissorhands”) and financial disappointments like 2004’s “Finding Neverland” or 2000’s “Chocolat.”
“I’m proud of those films and even though I’ve had a career of basically doing failures, or commercial failures, it never felt that way to me,” Depp said.
In the 2003 original, Depp’s cartoonish pirate was a revelation. Few expected a blatantly commercial movie based on a Disney theme park ride to result in an Oscar nomination for Depp.
“I was never opposed to the idea of commercial success, in terms of a movie or whatever, but if it was gonna happen it had to happen the right way, it had to happen kind of on my terms,” the 43-year-old actor said.
The reviews for “Dead Man’s Chest” have not been what they were for “The Curse of the Black Pearl,” but Depp — who’s displayed his idiosyncratic, unpredictable skills in such movies as “Benny & Joon,” “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” and “Don Juan DeMarco” — was still clearly a great draw for moviegoers.
“He set it apart,” the film’s producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, told the AP. “Disney movies prior to ‘Pirates’ were for young kids. When you put his name on it, people go, ‘Wait a minute, there’s something strange here. We better check this out.’ ”
The first “Pirates” movie was a surprise hit in 2003, yielding $305 million domestically — easily Depp’s biggest box-office success. His off-kilter portrayal of Willy Wonka in last year’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” also pulled in a respectable $206 million in the U.S.
Since a third “Pirates” movie was filmed at the same time as the sequel, Depp (who stars alongside Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley) will likely continue to add to his newfound clout as not just a well-regarded actor, but a bankable movie star — an increasingly endangered species in today’s Hollywood.
“With this quirky characterization, he still has maintained his complete artistic credibility while appearing in maybe the most commercial movie of all time, given this opening record,” says Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations. “So he’s enjoying the best of both worlds.”
The impact of “Pirates” has already moved Hollywood’s 2006 numbers, which have been much scrutinized after last year’s dramatic downturn. The nearly 20 million moviegoers who flocked to see it over the weekend helped put the year’s total attendance figures at about 3.5 percent better than last year’s. Before “Pirates” came out, that number was closer to just 2 percent.
“Psychologically, for Hollywood, this is very important,” says Dergarabedian. “But we still need to see big hits coming down the pipeline. You can’t just rest on one film, but this is a great place to start.”
The “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise also has attained that hallmark of the big time: pornography spoof. The new adult film “Pirates” (clearly styled after “Pirates of the Caribbean”) claims to be the most expensive adult film ever made.

Want to be a Pirate in POTC3? Open casting call - men only HERE This site also informs us that they begin filming again August 3rd and expect to wrap by Nov. 30th. Again they will be filming in Los Angeles, Palmdale, and Long Beach (water work).

From GM Today
The depths of Depp
Sailing a second time as Captain Jack Sparrow, Steven Snyder takes a look at the unusual rise of this unexpected superstar
By STEVEN SNYDER - TimeOut Movie Critic
July 12, 2006
He was the sweet boy with scissors as hands; the dreamer of Peter Pan who refused to grow up; the lover Don Juan DeMarco; the sweet Gilbert Grape. Johnny Depp has made an indelible mark on American cinema that only he could have made - a most unlikely superstar who has now risen to the ranks of action hero.
Not only elevating 2003’s "Pirates of the Caribbean" - a film based on an amusement park ride - to a memorable experience, he starred again as Captain Jack Sparrow in the "Pirates’" sequel last weekend, lifting the franchise to whole new heights and helping the film break the record for the largest opening day ever.
But what’s most unusual, and remarkable, about Depp is how he has established himself as one of his generation’s most inimitable acting talents - not by taking the traditional route through parts in action movies, comedies and dramas, but by jumping into some of the most atypical roles and making them into memorable, heartfelt characters.
Here’s a look at some of Depp’s most memorable faces:
"Edward Scissorhands" (1990)
In "Scissorhands," Depp plays the grotesque creation of an inventor who abandoned him before he was finished, now forced to live with scissors in the place of hands. A classic outsider story, it’s a romantic comedy between Edward and an unwitting Avon saleswoman, a story about an unusual boy - and an unlikely romance - seeking acceptance
"Ed Wood" (1994)
With "Wood," Depp plays the famous B-movie director who some consider to be the creator of some of the worst films of all time as a warm, exuberant lover of all things Hollywood - a man obsessed with the seer thrill of creation.
"What’s Eating Gilbert Grape" (1993)
In this coming-of-age story, Depp stars opposite a young Leonardo DiCaprio as a boy who must care for his autistic brother in a small, ho-hum town.
"Don Juan DeMarco" (1995)
Bringing a modern twist to the famous romantic figure, Depp stars as a man who insists he is DeMarco, the renowned lover and fighter. When a psychiatrist intervenes after his attempted suicide, her skepticism is shaken by his ability to reawaken her love of life.
"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" (1998)
Based on Hunter S. Thompson’s famous book, Depp plays the drug-addled journalist who traverses the county with his attorney in search of the elusive "American Dream." Thanks in large part to his performance, the film has become a cult classic.
"Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" (2003)
Perhaps Depp’s most popular and widely-discussed role, here he plays the eccentric Captain Jack Sparrow, a pirate on the high seas, in a performance that more than one critic said evoked Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones.
"Finding Neverland" (2004)
Depp’s performance as the exuberant Sir James Matthew Barrie, the author of "Peter Pan" who wrote the classic after becoming good friends with the children of another family, earned Depp an Academy Award nomination for best actor.
"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (2005)
Chosen to star in this remake of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," Depp reimagines the part of Wonka, turning Gene Wilder’s light-hearted eccentric into an enigmatic, and disturbing, character.

From Rocky Mountain News
Kennedy: Pirate look seizes runway
Lesley Kennedy
July 13, 2006
Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of fashion fun!
Blame Johnny Depp, mateys. That pirate actor, supposedly seen all over Evergreen, seems to have spurred skulls and crossbones to sit squarely in the style hot seat.
Depp's Jack Sparrow, star of the box-office record-setting Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, released last week, may have helped spark the pirate fashion craze, but trendsetters from Ashlee Simpson to Natalie Portman to tiny Shiloh Jolie-Pitt are donning skulls, swords and other prized booty.
The Brangelina babe wore a skull and crossbones T-shirt on the cover of People magazine. Portman opted for a skull- printed T-shirt during a Total Request Live appearance on MTV. Ashlee Simpson tossed a $450 Alexander McQueen skull scarf around her shoulders during the TRL Awards.
And at Los Angeles fall Fashion Week, a slew of designers sent pirate-friendly wares down their runways.
Here's a look at celebs in on the trend, as well as a few treasures you might add to your own wardrobe.
Ahoy!

From Best Syndicated
Johnny Depp Rated Kindest Movie Star – Pirates of the Caribbean Actor Asked both Kate Moss and Winona Ryder to Marry Him Before
July 12th 2006
Pirates of the Caribbean hit blockbuster gold over the weekend beating out Superman for first place. Dead Man's Chest set an all-time record for Hollywood's biggest opening weekend. The movie grossed $132 million in ticket sales in the first three days.
The star, Johnny Depp, is so committed to the project that he plans on keeping the gold teeth used for his character, Captain Jack Sparrow, until the filming of the next installment is over.    He told MTV News “Only until we're done filming number three. Then I'll have to go through the process of yanking them." The next film, currently in production is Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.
Many people consider Depp an all around nice guy. He has been ranked the most generous celebrity when it comes to signing autographs. Autograph Collector Magazine says Depp is the kindest to fans requesting his signature.
Depp was born on June 9th 1963 in Owensboro Kentucy and dropped out of high school at age 16. He began playing in garage bands. When visiting Los Angeles, his ex-wife Lori Anne Allison introduced Depp to Nicolas Cage who helped launch his career.
He appeared in the 1984 film A Nightmare on Elm Street. His career really took off when he took a role as undercover cop Tommy Hanson in the popular TV series "21 Jump Street" in 1987.
He has been in a long-time relationship with French actress-singer Vanessa Paradis. He has two kids with her. Us Magazine reported that that before his relationship with Paradis, he asked several women to marry him including Kate Moss and Winona Ryder.

POTC2 has the biggest Tuesday on record: $15,731,919 per BoxOfficeMojo

InTooDepp sent scans from OK Magazine

From EW
"Happy Days" for Zwigoff on Depp film
July 9, 2006 00:01:15
"Happy Days" for Zwigoff on Depp film
By Gregg Goldstein
NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Terry Zwigoff ("Bad Santa") will direct an adaptation of the French novel "Happy Days" for current box office champ Johnny Depp's production company.
Laurent Graff's story follows a thirtysomething man who decides to leave his wife and children and check himself into a rest home. There he develops a special bond with an old woman suffering from terminal cancer, taking her on a special journey as her last wish.
"Johnny Depp asked me to do the film," Zwigoff said. "He said he chose me because I'm very Hal Ashby-like," referring to the late director of the intergenerational romance "Harold and Maude." "I took that as a compliment. It's a very quaint, fantastical story."
Zwigoff's credits include the recent "Art School Confidential," "Ghost World" and the director's cut of "Bad Santa," set for an October DVD release.
He will write the script with Jerry Stahl, whose credits include the drug addiction memoir "Permanent Midnight" and co-writing the screenplay for "Bad Boys II." Graff's novel was translated into English by Linda Coverdale.
The "Happy Days" project, being developed by Depp's Infinitum Nihil banner, is based at Warner Bros. Pictures. Depp stars in Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," which set a new record for a three-day opening with an estimated haul of $132 million over the weekend.

From Juice
Brilliant acting keeps 'Pirates' sequel from sinking
Grade: B
Rated: Arrrgh! (Just kidding. It's PG-13)
Running time: 150 minutes
by joe lawler
juice staff writer
07/12/2006

Johnny Depp is Captain Jack Sparrow and Orlando Bloom is Will Turner in “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.”
Three years ago Disney released what seemed like an unlikely hit: "Pirates of the Caribbean." Johnny Depp was a respected but not exactly bankable star, and an amusement park ride seemed like an unlikely inspiration for a film.
Now, Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow is back in a bigger, if not better, sequel.
The film opens on the wedding day of Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) and Will Turner (Orlando Bloom). Before the "I dos," Cuttler Beckett (Tom Hollander) of the East India Trading Company arrives to arrest the couple for their part in freeing Jack. Will can save himself and his bride from the gallows by convincing Jack to hand over his seemingly broken compass.
Things aren't going so well for Jack, either. His crew is near mutinous, and the squid-faced pirate Davy Jones (Bill Nighy), essentially the devil of the sea, is after Jack to settle an old debt. Jack agrees to help Will if Will helps track down a key to the Dead Man's Chest.
There is a lot to like about "Dead Man's Chest." Depp is once again brilliant and manages to make Captain Jack more despicable, but no less likable. Nighy's monstrous Davy Jones is an incredible looking villain. The character is a seamless blend of prosthetics and CGI. Amazingly, Nighy's performance isn't lost under all the layers.
"Dead Man's Chest" amps up the cartoonier aspects of the original, sometimes to great effect, sometimes to its detriment. When Jack, Will and Elizabeth's former fiancé engage in a sword fight on a spinning wheel, it's amazing. When Jack pole vaults using a bamboo rod tied to his back and lands on his feet, it's just ridiculous.
The long film also suffers from a bit too much plot. A few scenes are superfluous, and characters coincidentally encounter each other way too often.
Still, great acting and nonstop action make it easier to ignore some of the plot contrivances. The film also ends with a great cliff hanger, setting up for next summer's "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End."
"Dead Man's Chest" doesn't have the surprise factor going for it that the first film did, but it's still a solid summer film.

From the North West Indiana Times
Jack Sparrow part deux
Johnny Depp finds himself and success in 'Pirates' trilogy
BY SANDY COHEN
AP Entertainment Writer

Johnny Depp scored a double hat trick with Captain Jack Sparrow. First, thanks to the success of 2003's "The Curse of the Black Pearl" -- for which Depp earned an Oscar nomination -- "Pirates of the Caribbean" became a trilogy.
Depp also achieved a three-part personal coup with the role: unbridled creative expression in a spectacular commercial success with a film he can happily share with his kids.
But with the second "Pirates" picture, "Dead Man's Chest," in theaters July 7 and filming nearly wrapped on the third, the 43-year-old actor is reluctantly preparing to put aside the roguish pirate he describes as "part rock-star, Keith Richards-kind-of-guy and part Pepe Le Pew."
"It's always hard to say goodbye to a character at the end of a shoot, but with Captain Jack especially," says Depp, who exudes the same magnetic charm in person as he does on screen. "I've really come to enjoy spending time with him, or as him, whatever it is. He's definitely a big part of me."
Depp even wears Sparrow's gold and silver teeth off screen: they're bonded to his own.
It took 20 years in the movie business -- and having two children -- to bring the actor to the place where Captain Jack Sparrow could be born. The flamboyant character, who remains lovable despite lying, cheating and drunken-staggering, was inspired by the whimsy of cartoons, Depp says. Like Bugs Bunny, Jack Sparrow has an appeal that transcends age and gender.
Cartoon characters "are not bound by the same laws as regular human-being actors," Depp says, his brown eyes and shaggy hair peeking out from under a gray fedora. "So I thought that would be a fun way to approach a (movie) character, to push the boundaries. That's where I was coming from when the 'Pirates' thing cropped up, so it was kismet in a way."
The stark originality of the character initially scared studio heads, says producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
"They said, 'He's gay, he's drunk. Oh my God, what are you guys doing?' But once we cut a scene together, they saw the fun of it," he says.
That fun was tripled when Depp agreed to reprise the role -- twice.
"None of us would be back if Johnny had not wanted to play this character again," Bruckheimer says.
In "Dead Man's Chest," crafty Jack Sparrow seeks to avoid paying the debt he owes to undersea overlord Davy Jones (Bill Nighy). Sparrow tricks young lovebirds Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Kiera Knightley) into helping him, and the three take off on an adventurous escapade that includes fighting sea monsters, infiltrating an island community and searching the watery underworld for the legendary "dead man's chest."
The film has heart, Nighy says, attributing the appeal of the first "Pirates" movie to Depp's depiction of Sparrow.
"It must be one of the most popular performances of recent times," Nighy says. "Not only is (Depp) an assassin in terms of comedy and everything else -- he's a brilliant guy -- but he brings to it, and to the movie as a whole, a big-heartedness. It has good spirit."
Depp has tried to pour his soul into all his performances, he says, whether they were in a tiny independent film or a big-budget blockbuster. Commercial success, while appealing, was not crucial, he says.
"It didn't make sense to me that you go into work and put as much of yourself and your heart into something, and in the end, all it's about is how much money it makes at the box office. Eeew," he says with disgust. "I can't think that way."
His movies were "box-office poison," he says, but "it never felt that way to me."
"I'm not comfortable saying movies are art," Depp says. "I don't know that they can be because there's so much money involved."
So it is, he says, he approaches his work from an artistic, not financial, perspective. Box-office receipts "are kind of none of my business," he says.
"You have to have some sort of legacy in truth and honesty that you leave to your kiddies and the people you love."
Depp's two children, with partner Vanessa Paradis, help the actor feel grounded and give him a stable launching point from which to explore his craft.
Being a parent, he says, has "given me real foundation, a real strong place to stand -- in life, in work, in everything."
As he looks ahead, Depp says he still hopes to one day take Marlon Brando's advice, which he relays in a "Godfather" voice: "You ought to play Hamlet while you're still young enough to do it."
"The clock's ticking on that," Depp says. "There's only a couple more years that I've got, otherwise I'll be playing Hamlet's father."
If he takes on the role, it would be in a "tiny, tiny little theater," he says.
Or not.
"As careers go, you've got your ups, you've got your downs, peaks and valleys and all that," he says. "I may end up doing special appearances at shopping malls as Jack Sparrow. You never know."

Bob Igor, President of Disney, announced that POTC: DMC made $18 Million on Monday, extending its already record-breaking opening weekend.

From CNN
Johnny Depp a box office magnet
'He set it apart,' says producer of star's 'Pirates' performance
Tuesday, July 11, 2006; Posted: 11:09 a.m. EDT (15:09 GMT)
NEW YORK (AP) -- Who knew a good Keith Richards impression could be so lucrative?
"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," which earned a record haul of $135.6 million in its opening weekend, is a sequel full of special effects, plot twists and pretty heartthrobs.
But it's Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow -- the drunken buccaneer famously modeled on the Rolling Stones' Richards -- who may have propelled "Pirates" to the all-time largest opening box-office gross. It bested 2002's "Spider-Man," which took in $114.8 million in its first weekend.
It's an unusual mainstream success for Depp, whose career has been mostly marked by Tim Burton's cultish films ("Ed Wood," "Edward Scissorhands") and financial disappointments like 2004's "Finding Neverland" or 2000's "Chocolat."
"I'm proud of those films and even though I've had a career of basically doing failures, or commercial failures, it never felt that way to me," Depp told The Associated Press in a recent interview.
In the 2003 original, Depp's cartoonish pirate was a revelation. Few expected a blatantly commercial movie based on a Disney theme park ride to result in an Oscar nomination for Depp.
"I was never opposed to the idea of commercial success, in terms of a movie or whatever, but if it was gonna happen it had to happen the right way, it had to happen kind of on my terms," the 43-year-old actor said.
The reviews for "Dead Man's Chest" have not been what they were for "The Curse of the Black Pearl," but Depp -- who's displayed his idiosyncratic, unpredictable skills in such movies as "Benny & Joon," "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" and "Don Juan DeMarco" -- was still clearly a great draw for moviegoers.
"He set it apart," the film's producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, told the AP. "Disney movies prior to `Pirates' were for young kids. When you put his name on it, people go, 'Wait a minute, there's something strange here. We better check this out.' "
The first "Pirates" movie was a surprise hit in 2003, yielding $305 million domestically -- easily Depp's biggest box-office success. His off-kilter portrayal of Willy Wonka in last year's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" also pulled in a respectable $206 million in the U.S.
Since a third "Pirates" movie was filmed at the same time as the sequel, Depp (who stars alongside Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley) will likely continue to add to his newfound clout as not just a well-regarded actor, but a bankable movie star -- an increasingly endangered species in today's Hollywood.
"With this quirky characterization, he still has maintained his complete artistic credibility while appearing in maybe the most commercial movie of all time, given this opening record," says Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations. "So he's enjoying the best of both worlds."
The impact of "Pirates" has already moved Hollywood's 2006 numbers, which have been much scrutinized after last year's dramatic downturn. The nearly 20 million moviegoers who flocked to see it over the weekend helped put the year's total attendance figures at about 3.5 percent better than last year's. Before "Pirates" came out, that number was closer to just 2 percent.
"Psychologically, for Hollywood, this is very important," says Dergarabedian. "But we still need to see big hits coming down the pipeline. You can't just rest on one film, but this is a great place to start."
The "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise also has attained that hallmark of the big time: pornography spoof. The new adult film "Pirates" (clearly styled after "Pirates of the Caribbean") claims to be the most expensive adult film ever made.

From the Sun Sentinel
Depp's Jack Sparrow has commandeered our hearts and our wallets
By Jim Beckerman
Avast and belay! Heave to, ye scurvy sea dogs! And while we're on the subject: arrrrrrrghhhh.
Are ye lubbers ready for the year of the pirate?
You'd better be. Because Johnny Depp's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest opened Friday with a box-office record ($132 million in three days), and it's just the opening shot, buckos.
"Kids are really fascinated by pirates right now," says Malinda Behrens, spokeswoman for the party-supply retailer Party City. "It's definitely one of the top five party themes for kids for the past 18 months."
All in all, quite a comeback story for the skull and crossbones.
Anyone would have told you before 2003's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl raked in a cool $655 million internationally that pirates as a pop-culture fad were dead in the water.
Two earlier attempts to jump-start the genre, 1976's Swashbuckler and Roman Polanski's 1986 Pirates, were not only flops, they were considered textbook examples of Hollywood not having its finger on the pulse of the audience.
What a difference a Depp makes.
His encore performance as the eccentric Capt. Jack Sparrow is expected to coincide this year with a spike in buccaneer-themed children's parties and piratical Halloweens. So says Party City, which has dubbed 2006 the Year of the Pirate.
"We have an entire section dedicated to pirates," Behrens says. "We have birds you can put on your shoulders, eye patches, hats. We've seen this trend coming."
And that's just for starters. Here's some more pirate booty -- courtesy of your local theater, video dealer and mall:
>The Pirate Queen, a new musical by Claude-Michael Schonberg and Alain Boublil, the creators of Les Miserables and Miss Saigon, is dropping anchor on Broadway in the spring.
>Pirate-themed video games such as Atari's Pirates! and Akella's Age of Pirates: Captain Blood are hitting the market and Buena Vista Games' movie tie-ins Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest are among the many.
Skull and crossbones-themed clothing and jewelry are a hot fashion trend, geared to both kids and adults.
As the makers of Captain Morgan spiced rum (another company that has benefited from all the pirate hoopla) remind us in their TV ads: There's a little bit of pirate in all of us.
"Who among us doesn't have that fantasy of breaking boundaries, of escaping into freedom and living by their own rules?" says Gordon Greenburg, director and co-conceiver of the musical Pirates! "That's why pirates in America always have a special fascination."
This Pirates of the Caribbean fad might seem brand new to today's kids. But it would have been familiar to their great-great-grandparents.
"There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure." So Mark Twain wrote in 1876's Tom Sawyer, at a time when "playing pirate" was as universal to childhood as marbles, birthday cakes and bullying smaller children.
To the actual, colorful facts of pirate history -- the period from about the 1500s to the 1700s when figures like Capt. Henry Morgan, Edward "Blackbeard" Teach and Jean Lafitte cruised the Caribbean in search of trade ships to plunder -- the pop culture of the 19th century added further refinements.
From Treasure Island, the 1883 children's classic by Robert Louis Stevenson, kids learned that pirates sang "yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum," stumped about on peg legs and perched parrots on their shoulders.
From Peter Pan, the whimsical 1904 J.M. Barrie play, audiences learned that pirates made their victims walk the plank (a detail Barrie seems to have invented).
From these authorsHollywood evolved the swashbuckler: movies full of swordplay, colorful costumes and damsels in distress that turned athletic stars like Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn into worldwide favorites.
Through the 1950s, pirate movies were as reliable a box-office draw as Westerns, which is probably why Disneyland introduced its popular Pirates of the Caribbean ride, the eventual basis for the movies, in 1967.
Ironically, the Pirates of the Caribbean ride arrived just as pirates as a movie subject were on the way out, victim of changing tastes and the new vogue for super spies, space explorers and other up-to-date action heroes.
There things might have remained -- had not Disney and Johnny Depp found a way to make pirates hip again.
"Somehow he discovered the humor and the sexiness of pirates again and made them contemporary," Greenburg says. "I think that, thanks to Johnny Depp's superb Keith Richards impression, people are getting excited about the whole genre again."

From Florida Today
Depp is why 'Pirates' plundering record books
BY JAKE COYLE
ASSOCIATED PRESS

Enlarge this image
    Experts agree. Johnny Depp's drunken buccaneer Jack Sparrow has been the driving force behind "Pirates" becoming the all-time largest opening box-office gross. It bested 2002's "Spider-Man," which took in $114.8 million in its first weekend. AP
Who knew a good Keith Richards impression could be so lucrative?
"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," which earned a record haul of $135.6 million in its opening weekend, is a sequel full of special effects, plot twists and pretty heartthrobs.
But it's Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow -- the drunken buccaneer famously modeled on the Rolling Stones' Richards -- who may have propelled "Pirates" to the all-time largest opening box-office gross. It bested 2002's "Spider-Man," which took in $114.8 million in its first weekend.
It's an unusual mainstream success for Depp, whose career has been mostly marked by Tim Burton's cultish films ("Ed Wood," "Edward Scissorhands") and financial disappointments such as 2004's "Finding Neverland" or 2000's "Chocolat."
"I'm proud of those films and even though I've had a career of basically doing failures, or commercial failures, it never felt that way to me," Depp said recently.
In the 2003 original, Depp's cartoonish pirate was a revelation. Few expected a blatantly commercial movie based on a Disney theme park ride to result in an Oscar nomination for Depp.
"I was never opposed to the idea of commercial success, in terms of a movie or whatever, but if it was gonna happen it had to happen the right way, it had to happen kind of on my terms," the 43-year-old actor said.
The reviews for "Dead Man's Chest" have not been what they were for "The Curse of the Black Pearl," but Depp -- who's displayed his idiosyncratic, unpredictable skills in such movies as "Benny & Joon," "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" and "Don Juan DeMarco" -- was still clearly a great draw for moviegoers.
"He set it apart," the film's producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, said. "Disney movies prior to 'Pirates' were for young kids. When you put his name on it, people go, 'Wait a minute, there's something strange here. We better check this out.' "
The first "Pirates" movie was a surprise hit in 2003, yielding $305 million domestically -- easily Depp's biggest box-office success. His off-kilter portrayal of
Willy Wonka in last year's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" also pulled in a respectable $206 million in the U.S.
Since a third "Pirates" movie was filmed at the same time as the sequel, Depp (who stars alongside Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley) will likely continue to add to his newfound clout as not just a well-regarded actor, but a bankable movie star -- an increasingly endangered species in today's Hollywood.
"With this quirky characterization, he still has maintained his complete artistic credibility while appearing in maybe the most commercial movie of all time, given this opening record," says Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations. "So he's enjoying the best of both worlds."
The impact of "Pirates" has already moved Hollywood's 2006 numbers, which have been much scrutinized after last year's dramatic downturn. The nearly 20 million moviegoers who flocked to see it over the weekend helped put the year's total attendance figures at about 3.5 percent better than last year's. Before "Pirates" came out, that number was closer to just 2 percent.
"Psychologically, for Hollywood, this is very important," says Dergarabedian. "But we still need to see big hits coming down the pipeline. You can't just rest on one film, but this is a great place to start."
The "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise also has attained that hallmark of the big time: pornography spoof. The new adult film "Pirates" (clearly styled after "Pirates of the Caribbean") claims to be the most expensive adult film ever made.

From MusicRooms
Johnny Depp's New Gold Teeth

Johnny Depp is keeping the gold teeth he wore in 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest'. The actor revealed he has grown so attached to the lavish caps he donned to portray his character Captain Jack Sparrow that he plans to keep them.
He told MTV News: "They will be staying on, but only until we're done filming number three. Then I'll have to go through the process of yanking them."
Meanwhile, Depp's co-star Naomie Harris has let slip her character, voodoo fortune-teller Tia Dalma, may become romantically involved with Captain Sparrow in the third film, tentatively titled 'At World's End'.
Harris claims the director, Gore Verbinski, told the two stars they could decide if their on screen relationship developed into something more serious.
She revealed: "It's supposed to be that we're lovers. We talked about it in rehearsals, but Gore Verbinski, the director, left it up to us, really, to come up with our own stories ourselves."

From Scripps News
Superstardom is uncharted territory for Depp
By JEFF STRICKLER
Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune
11-JUL-06
Click for hi-res image.
Johnny Depp, the man who changed shape shifting from fictional concept to thespian reality, faces the toughest role of his career. And the actor _ legendary for the lengths he goes to prepare for a performance _ admits he isn't ready because he hasn't done his homework.
"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" thrusts Depp into uncharted territory: the mystical and maniacal realm of the superstar.
Sure, he has starred in plenty of movies, but usually as a performer who prides himself on disappearing inside his role. It wasn't Depp who drew audiences to those films, it was characters such as Edward Scissorhands, Donnie Brasco and George Jung ("Blow").
But the patrons lining up at theaters to see "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" are there to see Depp. The sequel to the 2003 blockbuster _, which had $652 million in ticket sales worldwide _, is a mega-budget star vehicle built around and totally dependent on Capt. Jack Sparrow, the flamboyant pirate he created. And that blows his mind. "I've definitely never been a crowd-pleaser," he said. "I was very surprised that the first 'Pirates' did as well as it did. I still am."
Over the years he built a loyal fan base and generated reams of critical acclaim by focusing on quirky characters in movies outside the mainstream. Still, he was never a major player.
"If you define my career in terms of box office, I've spent 20 years making movies that the studios consider failures," he said. "To me, they were great successes just because we got them made."
Depp says he's "not the leading-man kind of actor _ there's a whole bunch of guys out there, actor types, who do that well." Instead, he prefers characters "who may seem bizarre." He points out that while the first "Pirates" movie was being filmed, studio executives went bonkers over reports that he was playing the freewheeling character as a seagoing Keith Richards.
"The executives panicked, and for good reason," he said. "Fortunately, the viewers came in and saved me."
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer confirmed that analysts were not expecting big things from the 2003 original.
"Everyone was very skeptical," he said. "They said, 'A movie based on a theme-park ride? No way.' Besides, no one had made a pirate movie for 20 years. It was a daunting task to get across to people that we were excited about it."
Click for larger image
This time was different, of course. Because of the new movie's blockbuster-in-the-making status, the studio insisted that it be kept top-secret.
Director Gore Verbinski said that the first film's low profile enabled him to recruit actors from foreign and independent movies _ the same background as Depp.
Keira Knightley was nominated for an Oscar earlier this year for "Pride and Prejudice," but when we hired her, she was just a teenager," he said. "And as for Orlando (Bloom), the first 'Lord of the Rings' movie hadn't come out. They weren't famous yet."
He does what feels right.
Depp's elevation to the rank of box-office heavyweight was enhanced by the $206 million earned by "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" last year. But he also made it clear that ticket sales are not his highest priority when he starred in "The Libertine," a bleak portrait of a self-destructive poet that took in a paltry $4.8 million.
"I don't think the industry has always understood the movies I do, and if they don't understand them, they can't sell them," he said.
If you're expecting Depp to go into a mainstream-blockbusters-are-inherently-evil tirade, however, forget it. He loves playing Capt. Jack Sparrow. To wit, filming of the third movie in the series, scheduled for release next Memorial Day, is half done and will resume as soon as the promotional work for this movie is over.
He has said he's willing to make "16 or 17" more installments. And, he insists, he's not kidding.
"That character made a lot of friends out there," he said. "He's a really fun character to play ... I don't feel that I'm done with him yet."

From TimesLeader
Swashbuckling smash hit
By Ignatious Schiavo Weekender Correspondent
“Jack’s back.”
Captain Jack Sparrow returns for more mayhem at sea in this week’s adventure “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.”
Once again Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) is up to his braids in trouble. Young Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) has set out from his wedding to find the troubling rogue while his young bride-to-be Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) anxiously awaits his return.
Young Will finds Jack being worshipped as a god by a cannibalistic Island tribe. Trouble is they plan on freeing their god by eating him too. After a narrow escape Jack and Will head out to solve both their problems.
Jack has had a debt come due. The legendary Davey Jones (Bill Nighy) and his band of tortured souls have come callin’ aboard their vessel “The Flying Dutchman.” Jack is given three days to accumulate 100 souls to take the place of his own or face the horrors of Davey Jones’s underwater behemoth “The Kraken.” In the meantime, Davey will keep young Will to insure Jack’s return.
With time ticking by, Will devises a plot to steal the key to Davey’s locker. The locker contains the love-sick heart of Davey Jones. If Will can destroy it he can free them all. Can Will find the key and can he count on the scoundrel of scoundrel’s Captain Jack to go against type and concern himself with another’s welfare?
Disney’s latest chapter of the “Pirates” series fits snuggly into the warm bed of summer blockbuster. With swashbuckling action (is there any better kind?) and a familiar and endearing cast, how could it lose?
The story line is solid enough for this type of flick and the jaunty dialogue clicks by at a good pace. The CGI work is fabulous. The barnacle infested demon’s inhabiting the “Dutchman” and “The Kraken” are done in unnerving fashion. The familiar faces of Bloom and Knightley are surrounded by a cast of appropriately clad and flossing deprived seamen. Even through his tentacled head, Bill Nighy (“Love Actually”) is fabulous as the lovelorn nightmare of the deep Davey Jones. It is, however, Jack’s show and he delivers once again.
I would be hard pressed to find an instance where Johnny Depp has not delivered. Even in projects where the film crumbled around him (let’s say “Astronaut’s Wife” and “Once Upon a Time in Mexico”) Depp is ALWAYS magnificent. He has created in the quirky rogue of a pirate Jack Sparrow an iconic figure that will forever be in the annals of cinematic history.
I highly recommend “Pirates” to all those looking to get lost in the magic of cinema for a few hours. Parental note: while it’s a great film for the kiddos, the time is a bit lengthy so act accordingly. However, for those with a strong bladder “Pirates of the Caribbean” will deliver a truly magical cinematic experience that rivals any ride Disney could conjure up.
Yo-ho me Hardies, yo-ho…arr.

From Contact Music
Depp Enjoys Kids Shows
Hollywood star JOHNNY DEPP has to watch his favourite children's shows TELETUBBIES and THE WIGGLES on his own - because his own kids have grown out of them. The PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN actor became hooked on the series, after catching LILY-ROSE, seven, and JACK, four, glued to them. But now the pair - his children with partner VANESSA PARADIS - have moved onto more sophisticated viewing and he's still addicted. He says, "I'm disappointed because my kids are growing out of TELETUBBIES and THE WIGGLES, and I wanted to continue watching them. "So I will."

From New York Magazine
The Depp, Depp Sea
Who cares about plot? The Pirates sequel is a wild ride all the same. Plus: a French alter-ego trip.
    * By David Edelstein
Most sequels open flabbily and take your attention for granted: The filmmakers figure they’ve already hooked you and have all the time in the world. But the lack of a lean narrative line is an unexpected boon to Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, a collection of swashbuckling set pieces with the hustle of a vaudeville show. The movie’s predecessor, Curse of the Black Pearl, started like gangbusters but lost its rudder and went around in circles. Plus, it was half an hour too long (at least). This one is longer yet (two hours and 33 minutes for a pirate picture!) and has no ending (a third installment was shot simultaneously), but has so much going on that you forget about niceties like plot or suspense. Zany cannibals! A giant demonic octopus! Half-man-half-fish pirate phantoms! A three-man duel on a huge rolling wheel! Keira Knightley’s magic inflatable jaw! And, of course, Johnny Depp doing . . . whatever it is he’s doing. His eyes rimmed like a glam rocker’s, his gait a tipsy tiptoe-through-the-tulips, his Captain Jack Sparrow would win a gonzo-effeminacy contest with Marlon Brando’s Fletcher Christian—which I write with admiration and awe.
In Dead Man’s Chest, this maverick weirdo is dubbed a “dying breed” in an ever-smaller world by a shifty lord who takes his cues from the East India Trading Company—by no means the last instance of a multinational corporation using a country’s military to deliver massive profits to itself. Poor Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Knightley) find their nuptials postponed by imprisonment for treason; in exchange for the couple’s freedom, Will must track down Captain Jack and obtain a compass that leads to a buried treasure chest with the heart of Davy Jones (of locker fame)—to whom Jack has sold his soul. Early on, I gave up on following the ins and outs of compasses and keys and sundry other MacGuffins and had fun thinking about confounded studio story execs being forced to hold their tongue in the face of the first film’s phenomenal grosses.
The director, Gore Verbinski, has grown more adept at Spielberg-style action, in which the fun is as much in the elegance of the staging as the stunts. I can’t begin to diagram Jack’s pole-vault with a spear full of tropical fruits and subsequent plunge through a series of rope bridges; and that rolling-wheel battle has so many variables it’s like a great Newtonian physics joke. Dead Man’s Chest has fewer JMW Turner marine vistas and more creepy creatures—fishmen formed out of soil and seaweed and parts of crustaceans and mollusks. Davy Jones himself, the Captain of the Flying Dutchman, turns out to be a malicious, mandibled squid-man, a special effect with the hoary snarl of Bill Nighy (recognizable by his trademark little snort): He’s a blend of your worst nightmare above the decks and below—leagues below.
Orlando Bloom is a study in blandness—but he’s largely a straight man for the rest of the cast, which includes the false-eyeballed Mackenzie Crook and the scurvy Lee Arenberg as former Black Pearl ghost pirates who’ve managed to attach themselves to the good guys like a fungus and Naomie Harris as some kind of voodoo swamp priestess. And Bloom is given luster by the ardor of Knightley, a heroine with gumption whose thrusting jaw takes her out of the insipid-ingenue class. She’s like some kind of fish herself—only worthy of a jeweled tank.
Depp has a riotous entrance that I won’t spoil, but there’s no sense of discovery this time. An actor like this isn’t made for sequels; he has new realms of looniness to conquer.
BACKSTORY
Johnny Depp has said that his inimitable pirate, Jack Sparrow, is probably gay, and is certainly based on two of Depp’s main influences: the wobbly Pepe Le Pew and the wobblier Keith Richards. Depp looked to Richards, he said, because pirates were “the rock stars of their day.” However, being a true rock god, Richards didn’t jump at Disney’s offer to cameo as Depp’s father in the third film (out next summer), reportedly saying, “The idea of working with Disney gives me shivers.” Yet Jerry Bruckheimer recently announced that Richards has warmed to the idea—though he didn’t say if that was because Disney offered him more booty.

"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" made more money than even Disney thought it would!
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest BV 4,133 $132,028,000 100.0% $31,944 $132,028,000 7/07/06 (from boxofficemojo.
That is $132 Million dollars it's opening weekend.
and from Boxofficemojo
'Pirates' Raid Record Books
by Brandon Gray
July 9, 2006
Yo ho, yo ho. A pirate's life for… everyone.
Or so it seems after Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest plundered the record books with an estimated $132 million opening weekend, swatting Spider-Man's long standing $114.8 million milestone atop the all time chart.
Buena Vista's swarthy sequel marauded over 8,500 screens at 4,133 sites—the third widest debut ever—compared to Spider-Man's 7,500 screens at 3,615 sites, though Pirates' estimated 20 million admissions out-paced Spidey by only a hair.
Pirates pilfered a trove of records, but the key ones, in addition to opening weekend, were biggest single and opening day and fastest to $100 million. On Friday, Dead Man's Chest raked in $55.5 million (including $9 million's worth of 2,100 midnight showings), eclipsing Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith's $50 million and grossing more in one day than its predecessor, The Curse of the Black Pearl, did in its entire opening weekend. Dead Man's Chest also became the first picture to cross the century mark in two days flat.
That rare crowd pleaser, The Curse of the Black Pearl made Dead Man's Chest the most anticipated picture of 2006. For decades, audiences had been averse to pirate movies—many notorious flops belonged to the genre, including Cutthroat Island and Pirates—but Buena Vista gambled three years ago with a costly movie based on the famous Disneyland attraction. Curse stood out with a mixture of swashbuckling adventure, humor, horror and Johnny Depp's characterization of rapscallion Jack Sparrow, and it ultimately grossed $305.4 million. With Dead Man's Chest, Buena Vista's marketing maintained the spirit of the original.
"The first movie was such a beloved title," said Chuck Viane, Buena Vista's president of distribution. "Jack Sparrow became a household name, and you had this pent-up demand to see the sequel. [Dead Man's Chest] was like the old days where going to the movies was a fun event."
Orlando Bloom in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
In order to reach record heights Dead Man's Chest appealed across all demographic groups, including an equal gender split. "There wasn't a category that stood out," Viane noted. "It was just a total blend." The studio's exit polling indicated that the audience's assessment was on par with the original with 92 percent rating Dead Man's Chest "excellent" or "very good," and pollster CinemaScore backed that up with an "A-" rating.
The third Pirates picture, At World's End, which was in production simultaneously with Dead Man's Chest in the tradition of the Back to the Future and Matrix sequels, will set sail on May 25 of next year. Combined, the Pirates sequels reportedly will cost $450 million to produce.
Powered by Pirates, the weekend as a whole marked the first time a top 12 has grossed more than $200 million. Overall business was up nearly 50 percent over the same weekend last year when Fantastic Four debuted on top.
Last weekend's high flyer, Superman Returns, was sacked in its second outing, plunging 58 percent. Cut down by Pirates, mixed word-of-mouth and the front-loadedness of the superhero genre, Warner Bros.' franchise resurrection earned an estimated $21.9 million for $141.7 million in 12 days—the picture's IMAX theaters, though, were down 27 percent and accounted for ten percent of the weekend gross. By comparison, Warner's previous revival, Batman Begins, descended 43 percent to $27.6 million in its second weekend, albeit opposite far less imposing competition.

From Deadline Hollywood
GO, JOHNNY, GO! Pirates 2 Smashes All Records! Hollywood Astounded! Biggest Opening Weekend in History at $133 Mil. Biggest One-Day Gross. Beats #1 Spidey.
SUNDAY UPDATE: It's official: I'm told that Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest is breaking every record in Hollywood's history books for a movie opening. Biggest one-day gross of all time. Biggest opening day gross of all time. And, now I'm told that Disney's juggernaut has the biggest weekend gross and the biggest opening weekend gross of all time and the fastest-to-$100-million-gross record. After amassing what even rivals say was a staggering $43+ million at the box office on Saturday to make it the second biggest ever, plus another gargantuan $55 mil on Friday (buoyed by those midnight shows) for the biggest ever, that's going to put the total take for this film at $133 mil by weekend's end (if estimates for a $35 mil Sunday hold, which they should, though it's unclear how much the World Cup Final impacts). That buries previous record-holder Sony's Spiderman. (I can hear the arguments now among movie fans over the next few days: who's tougher -- Spidey or Sparrow? Not to worry: they'll fight each other in Summer 2007) I'm told the movie was "pretty much operating at capacity" in its 4,133 theaters. It's truly an historic moment in Hollywood: even rival studios are calling the dollars being taken in by the Johnny Depp-starrer "astounding. Disney almost hit $100 mil on Day 2. We will see what happens when the final numbers shake out. Anyway you look at it, it's rare air." It simply never happens in Hollywood that competitors , who usually hope the other guy fails, are this gleeful about someone else's success. That's because theaters posted the all-time biggest non-holiday weekend gross ever from all movies playing -- over $205 million. Another record! Up 50% over last year. Internationally, Pirates 2 opened in just in a handful of markets this weekend but did a phenominal $46.6 million. Because of today's World Cup Final, Disney is waiting to open in most foreign markets.
As for the other movies, Warner's Superman Returns ended the weekend with an estimated $21.8 mil (ouch, that's almost -60%). Fox's The Devil Wears Prada made close to $15 mil (clearly that designer is still popular). Sony's Adam Sandler vehicle Click had one of the best holds on the board with $12 mil (only -40% its third weekend out). This is Sandler's 7th film to cross the $100 mil mark. And Disney/Pixar's Cars speeds past $200 with a $9 mil for week #5 (down only 38%).
SATURDAY UPDATE: I'm told that Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest, made a gargantuan $54 million on its opening day Friday -- the biggest one-day gross in history! Rival studios are predicting Disney's juggernaut playing in 4,133 theaters will do at least $130 million for its opening weekend, easily destroying Spiderman's No. 1 three-day weekend record of $114.8 million. As for the other movies faring at the box office, Warner's Superman Returns was down 57% with $7 million, Fox's The Devil Wears Prada (-47%) with $5 mil, Sony's Adam Samdler vehicle Click (-36%) held up with $4 mil, and Disney/Pixar's Cars (-34%) squealed in with $2.7 mil. That means this weekend's top 5 Hollywood movies will total a whopping $190 mil -- another record. Click, meanwhile, passes $100 mil today -- the 7th Sandler film to do that. Cars speeds to $200 mil today, and could pass X-Men 3's $235 mil to give Disney the summer's #1 and #2 movies. It's been so darn long since Disney shareholders have had something to cheer about when it comes to the company's product: let's see if, on Monday, the company's stock price spikes or stays the same. (Usually, Wall Street ain't impressed with the performance of individual movies, and that's probably a sensible attitude.) Hard to believe that, last summer, everyone was talking about the box office slump and predicting Hollywood was finito. It's now abundantly clear that the studio suits wised up and decided this time around to give the public what it wants: fun movies to go see. This isn't rocket science, after all; you'd think that would be a No. 1 priority.
FRIDAY: I'm told already that, based on today's matinees, Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest will have the biggest opening of any movie in history. Since May 24th, I've been predicting that it was gonna kill everything at the theaters this summer, and then, based on the early tracking, that it was going to be the all-time record-breaker. Now Pirates 2 is set to steal away Spiderman's No. 1 opening gross of $114.8 million. (Sorry, HBO, but Entourage's Aquaman didn't actually beat Spidey because that's a FAKE movie.) Not only will there be a Pirates 3, but Depp has said he's eager to do Pirates 4. That ka-ching, ka-ching sound you're hea