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Hollywood has cracked its 'Da Vinci Code' curse

DPA, LOS ANGELES
Friday, May 25, 2007, Page 16

Pirates of the Caribbean, back in business and not alone. PHOTO: COURTESY OF SONY

Like a weightlifter popping ever more steroids, Hollywood is breaking record after record this summer as its diet of bigger, better and more spectacular sequels pulls in huge audiences all around the world.

Starting with Spider-Man 3 and continuing with Shrek the Third, filmgoers seem unable to resist the old-new offerings from the giants of the film world.

Spidey's web of records included the best ever opening worldwide with a whopping US$381 million on its first weekend. By just its third week in release it had amassed US$750 million worldwide.

Shrek the Third meanwhile bagged the biggest opening ever for an animated movie, taking in almost US$122 million with its opening weekend in the US, and blowing past the previous record set by its predecessor in 2004.

The apparently insatiable desire of moviegoers to see new episodes of familiar films has Disney executives salivating with expectation in advance of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, which hits movie theatres last night with another swashbuckling tale about the lovable and eccentric rogue, Captain Jack Sparrow.

Executives are confident that audiences will flock to the movie like they did to its predecessor Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. That movie, the second in the franchise, was released last summer and quickly became the second most successful film in Hollywood history, earning US$1.065 billion.

Those are stellar figures, especially since many experts had predicted the demise of the blockbuster movie experience in an age of unlimited entertainment possibilities presented by the Internet.

Movie detractors may point out that the record-breaking bonanza is due, at least in part, to the ever-inflating cost of movie tickets. But face it — cinemas couldn't charge US$10 dollars a ticket if people didn't really, really want to see the films on offer.

So what's behind this success, which will probably keep rolling through the summer, with films like Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix, Live Free or Die Hard, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and Evan Almighty, the sequel to 2003's Bruce Almighty?

Simply put, it seems that Hollywood has cracked its own Da Vinci Code curse, hitting upon the secret of the sequel.

Traditionally franchise movies declined the longer the series progressed as the production team got bored, the original actors left and extraneous new characters and gimmicks detracted from the purity of the original viewing experience.

The new sequels however are often made together with the originals — a strategy pioneered by The Lord of the Rings and continued with Pirates.

"Continuity is certainly a plus when it comes to series," said Brandon Grey, founder of Box Office Mojo. "Sequels should have a similar feel as their predecessors and should be in the same universe."

Even when such marathons of film-making are impossible, studios ensure that they sign key personnel to sequel options, and focus sharply on keeping the original components intact to appeal to as large an audience as possible.

The approach is certainly commercially attractive, if not artistically daring.

"You know the characters and since you enjoyed the previous movies, of course you want to go again," said Lauren Rodriguez, a Los Angeles high school student who says she won't miss a single one of the big franchise movies this summer. "I know they're not sophisticated. But they're fun. And that's what summer's all about."
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