The fifth film in the "Pirates" franchise, "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales" premiered last Friday after a six-year wait for fans. Despite drama in the weeks leading up to the release of the Disney film due to ransom hackers holding it hostage, it turns out the whole thing was likely a hoax. Now that the film has made it through its opening weekend, how did it do at the box office and how was Captain Jack Sparrow's latest adventure received?
Winning the holiday box office
"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales" plundered the Memorial Day weekend box office by easily taking the number one spot.
It also easily sank its major competition in Paramount/Skydance's "Baywatch", which bombed and is being projected to only take in $21 million over the four-day weekend. The latest "Pirates" film is on pace to have a $76.3 million dollar four-day weekend after it made $23 million its opening day. Despite taking number one and the projected total, the movie will fall just short of the projected $80 million mark that Disney and many independent trackers had it at.
In fact, it will also fall far short of its predecessor, "On Stranger Tides", which made $90 million in its opening three-day weekend. However, the film is still expected to make a good profit off of its estimated $230 million budget because of its overseas numbers.
This is something that was clearly planned for, as the film became the first Hollywood movie to ever premiere in China. It did so at the Disney Resort located in the country's biggest city, Shanghai. "Dead Men Tell No Tales" has made about $208 million overseas after having released in all major markets except Japan. It opens in that country on July 1st, with Japan having been the top overseas market for "On Stranger Tides" with $108 million.
Critics hate it, but fans seem to love it
"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales", which stars Johnny Depp, Javier Bardem, Geoffery Rush and Kaya Scodelario, has been met with very different reviews from critics and fans. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a rotten critic review of 31%, but the audience score has it at a solid 75%.
On Metacritic, the aggregated critic Metascore is at a 39, while the user score by the fans is a decent 6.7/10. On moviegoer reaction site Cinemascore, audiences have given the movie a very good score of A-. That is actually a better score then its predecessor, which got a B+ score.
