Word: box
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...industry didn't think in roman numerals until The Godfather, Part II in 1974. But with the triumph of special-effects fantasies like Star Wars, sequels became a smart way to print money. Now they are needed to turn bad years into good ones. The difference between the box-office slump of 2005 and the rebound last year can be attributed to one film: Pirates 2. That's why the trifecta of threequels is crucial to Hollywood's health...
Look at the numbers. Of the top 10 worldwide box-office champs as tabulated by Boxofficemojo.com all except the No. 1 Titanic are franchise movies, and seven of those nine are sequels--episodes of Star Wars, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean and Shrek. (That's in actual figures. In inflation-adjusted dollars, 1939's Gone With the Wind is still the all-time winner, and no sequels make the top 10.) Dead Man's Chest, last year's second installment of Pirates of the Caribbean, was only the third film in history, after Titanic...
...blend in to the well-dressed crowds in China's capital. But one look and you could tell they were just poor peasants in new clothes: They were given away by their callused hands, dirt under their fingernails and the identical creases on their straight-out-of-the-box shirts - the quiet-spoken apple grower named Liang Yumin still had a piece of cardboard tucked under his collar...
...judge is now reviewing evidence and must decide whether military personnel, if they are involved, should face a civilian or armed forces tribunal. The military, which runs Brazil's air traffic control system, is not happy about its personnel being implicated. Military officers refused to hand over black box transcripts to police, delaying the inquiry and exacerbating the rivalry between the two bodies...
...school cheesiness of the movie's premise and urged the studio, New Line Cinema, to amp up the film's violence. But like snakes, Internet hype can't be tamed, and like flying, it's not that easy to get right. When Snakes finally opened, it was box-office venom, taking in a mere $34 million, not even half of cheapie horror flick...