Disney, whose Finding Nemo is smoothly sailing towards the $300 million benchmark, is looking at another potential hit in Pirates Of The Caribbean. It was the charter topper of the week, earning $46 million in three days, while the other period adventure, The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, sprinted to the second place with $23 million.

The Gentlemen cast is lead by its executive producer Sean Connery and includes a bearded and turbaned Naseeruddin Shah in a lengthy role as the mysterious Captain Nemo.

Though savaged by most critics for being inept and muddy, The Gentlemen was far from being a box-office washout. In fact, it could be the sleeper hit of the season, enduring small declines week after week. If it performs well abroad, it could be a modest hit. 

Set in the Caribbean Sea in the 17th century, Gore Verbinksi's (The Ring) adventure melodrama Pirates tells the story of the endearing rogue pirate Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp). He joins a blacksmith (Orlando Bloom) to hunt for pirate Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), who has kidnapped Elizabeth (Keira Knightley, who earlier appeared in Gurinder Chadha's Bend It Like Beckham), a governor's daughter.

Barbossa hopes to use Elizabeth to ward off a curse on his men and on himself.

Rescuing Elizabeth is now on the the minds of the influential, but dull, commodore (Jack Davenport), who is engaged to her as well as Sparrow and the blacksmith. The humble blacksmith has also been secretly in love with Elizabeth.

The lavishly made popcorn movie pleased many critics, especially USA Today's Claudia Puig, who declared this was the summer spectacle she has been waiting for over six  weeks. The New York Times also gave the film a good review.

But Los Angeles Times, New York Post and San Francisco Chronicle, among the major newspapers, gave the film which has been inspired by a theme park created by Disney, thumbs down.

Despite an appealing Johnny Depp, 'Pirates is no thrill ride', declared LA Times' Kenneth Turan, while Post's Lou Lumenick called the movie, which is over two hours long, 'bloated'. In the Chronicle, Mick LaSalle complained the film buckles under the 'heavy blockbuster treatment'.

Pirates, which opened Wednesday and whose five-day gross reached $70 million, pushed last week's cyborg thriller Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines to the third place, which lost about 55 per cent of the altitude.

Given its huge budget -- some report it to be $200 million and others place it at $160 million -- Arnold Schwarzenegger's comeback film T3 has plenty of muscle flexing to do abroad. It is not correct, as some reporters
have done, to call it a flop till the foreign run and video and DVD sales are factored in.

To break even, the film that has grossed $110 million in North America in two weeks, must perform at least 50 per cent better than it performed in America, overseas.

Given Schwarzenegger's popularity worldwide and the fact that most American films do bigger business in foreign territories, T3 should be a modestly profitable film in the long run.

To understand the worldwide market, here is an example: The Matrix Reloaded is ending its North American run with an impressive $280 million, while abroad, it grossed $420 million, with quite a bit of life left especially in Japan, where it might earn about $80 million.

It was a solid week at the box office in North America, but not an extraordinary one. Many Hollywood observers had expected Pirates to plunder at least $100 million in five days.

While several hit movies, including Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, now in third week with a $81.6 million gross, lost plenty of muscle over the weekend, Reese Witherspoon's Washington trip was far more successful in its second week than many of her rivals. Her Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde, in which she becomes a lobbyist for animal rights in DC,  lost 45 per cent of the popularity to earn a decent $62 million in two weeks.

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