I hear that Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest is setting records for “biggest opening weekend.”
I read a scathing review in which the reviewer essentially said that by making this film a set-up for a sequel, Disney was just in it for the gold.
Well… DUH. Of course filmmakers want to make money. And if they can make more by providing us with a thoroughly enjoyable film that has a sequel coming, I say “more power to them.” It’s not as if the filmmakers want to make money without having to go to the trouble of making a good movie. The characteristics of “quality” and “profitability” are not mutually exclusive.
Bruckheimer said that he was shooting for around $70 million for an opening weekend — up about 75% from the first film’s $43 million. The $140 million it is estimated to have made this weekend exceeds his expectations, and the expectations of the industry watchers who were predicting around $110 million, IIRC.
What does all that mean? Well, if you’ve got a stake in Disney’s “Pirate’s” franchise, it means “drink up, me hearties, yo-ho!”
Sandra and three of my kids returned home yesterday afternoon, and they brought with them Sandra’s sister Karen, her husband Sean, and their toddler. Today my mother- and father-in-law arrive, and we’ll officially have a full house (as defined by “all the beds are full, and people have started sleeping on the floors”).
I’ll be out all day though, so I’ll miss most of the merriment. I’ve got pencilling and inking to do, and lately that gets done best at The Dragon’s Keep. And then there’s Iron Kingdoms… so I’ll be out of the house all day, and by the time I get home, most of the beds that are destined to be full will already be filled. But I’ll be home on Friday, and I have no idea what the crowd has planned for that day.
I seem to have hit a dead patch. Journalling and blogging topics abound, lots of neat things are going on, and the more of them there are, the less desire I have to write about them.
This is probably why so much LJ out there is whiny and depressive. The people with the most time to write are, statistically speaking, the people with the least to write about, so they complain. (So instead of writing something meaningful, I’ll post something in which I take a stab at complaining about people who only post complaints? How’s THAT for lint-filled-navel-gazing?)