Monthly Archives: May 2017

UPDATED, 9:04 AM:Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Talesopened in nine more territories on Friday and now sits at an international tally of $86.5M (and climbing) with China leading the way at the box office. Audiences in the Middle Kingdom which enjoyed a Pirates premiere the first world premiere of a Hollywood film in China have bought tickets to the tune of$21.3M for the studio. The film is now open in more than 90% of its international footprint. Only the key market of Japan (the country that loves Disney movies) is yet to open; it sails into that country on July 1.

So far, Disney has taken in $110M through yesterday and is now looking at a worldwide haul by tomorrow of$275M. The overseas box office has grown in importance over the years for this and other franchises. Specifically for the Pirates franchise, 53% of the worldwide gross in 2003 came from overseas and on the last go around in 2011, that percentage grew to 76%.

Speaking of percentages, Pirates has a big 87% marketshare in China right now, and it already ranks as the 4th highest Disney opening day ever. It has already surpassed the entire cume of the third Pirates movie, At Worlds End.

Pirates is also No. 1 in Mexico with a 68% marketshare and already 29% ahead of the opening day of Pirates 4 On Stranger Tides. Spain opened to about $1.5M, which ranked No. 1 for the opening day (it also has a strong 67% of the market).

Update reported by Anita Busch

PREVIOUSLY FRIDAY, 8:44 AM: Disneys return to the swashbuckling adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow is off to a No. 1 start in all offshore markets. Through yesterday, Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales has reeled in $34.5M at the international box office. With domestic previews, that brings the global total to $40M as we head into the weekend.

Early estimates out of China, a key swing on how this Johnny Depp-starrer fares abroad, indicate an opening day today of $20M+ (that includes previews, but is not included in the overseas number above).

The launch day for Pirates 5, also known as Salazars Revenge in some overseas markets, ranks among the top debuts of the year in several hubs including Germany, Austria, France, Finland, Sweden, Belgium, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia.

The Joachim Ronning-Espen Sandberg-directed movie began overseas rollout on Wednesday with a strong opening in France ($2.3M, 2nd biggest bow of 2017, 5% behind opening day of Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, 4% ahead of Captain America: Civil War, 34% ahead of Jungle Book all in admissions).

Korea was also a good opening, 6% behind POTC4, and in Norway, the helmers home country, POTC5 had an 83% market share. Indonesia bowed significantly ahead of the opening day of Pirates 4. Thailand, at $400K, had its 2nd biggest opening day of 2017 to date. In a sign of how some Asia Pacific markets have grown over the years, this was 66% ahead of the opening day of Pirates 4

Thursdays openings brought Germany the biggest start for a film of 2017 at 40% above POTC4. The UK was also a No. 1 bow, although this weeks Manchester terrorist attack is expected to impact box office this weekend. In the Netherlands, POTC5 was the top opening day of 2017 with $900K and the 2nd highest opening day for any Disney release behind only Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It came in 47% ahead of POTC4.

Other markets topping the 2011 films performance on opening day include the UAE, Russia ($3.6M), Malaysia and Argentina.

In addition to China which is heading into the Dragon Boat holiday Spain and Mexico open today along with several other markets. Major markets not opening this weekend include Japan, which opens July 1.

For reference, On Stranger Tides opening weekend was about $175M in the same markets and at todays exchange rates; it went on to gross $805M offshore.

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'Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales' Says Ahoy To $86.5M Int'l Box Office Update - Deadline

New York Daily News

CARIBBEAT: Here comes "Caribbean Week in New York" 2017 New York Daily News A lone steel pan standing at the 2016 Rum and Rhythm Benefit and Auction at the Capitale event space in Manhattan is a bold iconic representative of the Caribbean Week New York, the annual Caribbean Tourism Organization event which returns next ...

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CARIBBEAT: Here comes "Caribbean Week in New York" 2017 - New York Daily News

Did duels to the death really take place between naval authorities and these wild men of the seas?

But the real stories are more amazing that anything seen on the big screen.

Captain Henry Avery: One of the most famous pirates of all time.

If one man can be said to have inspired the so-called Golden Age of Piracy, it's Captain Henry Avery.

In his book, "The Republic of Pirates," Colin Woodard writes that Avery's "adventures inspired plays and novels, historians and newspaper writers, and, ultimately the Golden Age pirates themselves."

"He was a really important inspiration and symbol to the subsequent generation who became the Golden Age pirates," Woodard tells CNN. "Part of the reason is that Henry Avery became a pop culture phenomenon when these other pirates would have been children and teenagers."

By the time they were young men, Avery was a legend.

A sailor aboard a merchant vessel, Avery, like many other sailors, was getting increasingly disillusioned with the way the system worked.

"Sailors were so badly treated in many of these merchant vessels by the captains and owners," Woodard says. "They were given lousy rations, cheated out of their pay at the end of journeys, often fed spoiled food and placed on vessels that intentionally didn't have enough provisions on board."

Enough was enough. In 1694 Avery rounded up others to the cause of freedom, riches and glory and seized a ship under the cover of darkness while its captain, Charles Gibson, was sleeping in his quarters.

Avery placed Gibson in a rowboat before sailing away, reportedly telling him: "I am a man of fortune, and must seek my fortune."

Avery and his crew sailed for the Indian Ocean, using Madagascar as their base of operations. Soon they came across and took a ship belonging to an Indian emperor.

Accounts vary on what happened aboard the ship but they all agree on one thing -- Avery made off with staggering haul of money, jewels, gold, silver and ivory, worth more than $200 million today.

Avery had his fortune and each member of his crew received the equivalent of 20 years of wages aboard a merchant vessel.

With his ship laden with treasure and naval forces all over the world scrambling to track him down, Avery sailed for the Bahamas where he bribed the governor of Nassau with ivory and weapons into allowing him to ditch his ship and take a smaller vessel, bound for Europe.

Landing in Ireland, he bid his crew farewell. Then he and his plunder disappeared into history, never to be heard from again.

Rumor and myth surrounds Avery's fate.

One report claimed Avery died a beggar, cheated out of his fortune. Another had him returning to Madagascar as king of the pirates, ruling over a piratical empire with a squadron of ships commanded from a fortified palace.

"Avery is one of the very few who turned full pirate and got away with it," Matt Albers of the Pirate History Podcast says. "He just disappeared into the winds of history.

"It might be that he died as a penniless beggar on the streets of London or he may have died with a fabulous kingdom out in the jungle somewhere.

"No one is entirely sure what happened to him. But we do know that he was never taken by the authorities."

Getting away with it was a 17th-century thing. For the men he inspired in the early 18th century there would be few, if any, happy endings.

"The thing about those famous pirates is that all of them got caught," Albers says. "At some point they had a run in with the authorities that didn't go well for them."

A map of the Caribbean depicting some of the pirates' bases and the location of significant events.

David Wilson, an academic specializing in historical piracy, says authorities tried to push stories of piratical downfall as a deterrent.

"Really they're trying to publicize that piracy ends in death," he says. "The message is these men meet their doom through piracy to try to discourage any future pirates."

And there were plenty to choose from.

"Black Sam'" Bellamy, for example, was a rising star in the pirate world, calling himself "the Robin Hood of the Seas." In 1715, at the age of 26, as captain of his own ship, the Whydah, he was the most feared man up and down the Americas.

Having amassed a small fortune and a reputation for being unbeatable, he was sailing for Cape Cod in 1717 when disaster struck.

"Cape Cod had a weather system that would drive ships against the brutal cliffs of sand and shoals," Woodard explains.

The Whydah was caught in a storm and ran aground with shocking force and sank with its treasure still on board. Some 160 men perished and Bellamy's body was never recovered.

Newspapers of the day claimed God had punished him for becoming a pirate.

Another famous story is that of Calico Jack Rackham, named for the flamboyant Calico clothing he liked to wear.

As a pirate, Rackham was pretty unsuccessful. He was captured quite easily in 1720 and hanged.

His flag fared better. It's the one we all associate as the pirate flag, the skull and crossbones, the Jolly Roger. Made famous by Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island."

"They all had different flags and black flags with all these different symbols on," Wilson says. "They all had symbols of death in some way or other just to enact fear in ships.

"If you could throw that flag up and the ship gives in without a fight you're doing much better than if you had to then engage with them."

Engraving of female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read holding swords.

Rackham is also famous for the company he was keeping when he was arrested: Mary Read and Anne Bonny, the only known female pirates of the era.

"There was Ching Shih in China but she wasn't so much a pirate as a pirate queen who ran a pirate empire," Albers says. "The same with Grace O'Malley in Ireland, less an actual pirate and more someone who ran the pirates' base."

Rackham's female crewmates helped cement his own myth and legend, Wilson adds.

"A lot is made out of the female pirates, there were some but they were an anomaly, as were any women on sailing ships at that time," says Charles Ewen, professor of anthropology at East Carolina University.

"Usually they were just passengers, but there were female sailors from time to time. But for the most part they were a disruptive influence."

Read and Bonny were to be tried on charges of piracy and surely hanged. But, knowing that expectant mothers were exempt from the gallows, both women seduced guards while being held captive and fell pregnant.

"Their histories are fairly short and I think that the reason they're so popular is because of their trial," Albers explains.

Their arrest and the subsequent escape from the noose was big news in the London press at the time, but no one got more coverage than the notorious Edward Teach, the most fearsome of all the Golden Age Pirates.

A man more commonly referred to as Blackbeard.

In this woodcarving you can see the lighted fuses Blackbeard would keep in and around his beard so that during battle a demonic halo of sparks, fire and smoke would surround him.

"The interesting thing about Blackbeard is, if you were doing a ledger of who got the most treasure and was the most successful in monetary terms or plunder terms Blackbeard wouldn't make your top 10 list at all," Woodard says.

"But he is by far the most famous real pirate who ever lived, and the reason is that he cultivated this image of terror."

Blackbeard ruled the seas through fear. He let his beard grow wild and long, wore clothes stolen from aristocrats and cultivated an image of a wild man in gentlemen's fittings.

"You had all these pirates with bandoliers and grenades and axes wearing a gentleman's wig or a woman's silk dress or scarves and all this finery." Woodard says. "His fellow pirates would be dressed up like a 'Mad Max' movie."

During battle, Blackbeard would also put lighted fuses in and around his beard, giving him a demonic halo of sparks, fire and smoke.

"It would be utterly terrifying to people on another vessel. And that was the whole point," Woodard says.

Blackbeard also had serious firepower.

"Blackbeard put 40 cannon on his ship, the Queen's Anne Revenge, and that was so he could sail up, run up the black flag, which apparently they really did, and then scare the folks into saying, 'Ok I give up, don't kill us,'" Ewen says. "You wanted to have a scary reputation."

Blackbeard's scare tactics were so successful that there's no documented account of him killing or hurting anybody. Everybody just simply gave up.

Until his final fatal battle with Britain's Royal Navy in 1718.

"It was the gallant young Lieutenant Robert Maynard who was leading the detachment of sailors charged with finding Blackbeard," Woodard explains.

"This is precisely where Robert Louis Stevenson and later the Disney movies and pop culture -- this is exactly the famous scene from where all this was constructed.

"Blackbeard's battle was the model for your cliche shipboard fight between the dashing young officer and the rogue pirate," Woodard continues.

Blackbeard and his men boarded Maynard's ship. Cutlass in one hand, pistol in the other, Blackbeard engaged the lieutenant in a duel to the death.

Maynard shot Blackbeard, but the pirate carried on fighting furiously with his cutlass, Maynard's own sword breaking as he tried to stave him off.

As Blackbeard was about to deliver the final blow, one of Maynard's men delivered the pirate a "terrible wound in the neck and throat."

Maynard then shot Blackbeard again in the stomach and though he cocked his pistol ready to return fire, he fell down dead before he could.

Maynard decapitated Blackbeard and hung his head from the front of his ship. He sailed up the east coast of America, causing shockwaves as news spread that the notorious Edward Teach had perished in battle.

"There was only one newspaper in what is now the United States, the Boston Newsletter and they covered it exhaustively, as did the London papers at the time. It was the big media phenomenon of the early 18th century," Maynard says.

Yet there remains a mystery with Blackbeard -- the whereabouts of his journal.

The journal was recovered by Maynard and used as evidence to try Blackbeard's captured crew on charges of piracy. But after the trial, the journal, along with court documents, vanished from history.

"People have been looking for it for years," David Moore, a nautical archaeologist says.

Under protocols of the time, there should have been a copy of the documents in the place of trial and another sent back to the Admiralty in London.

"For whatever reason that copy was never sent or it disappeared or it got lost in the filing system," Moore says.

"Certainly if it had been misfiled somebody would have stumbled across it by now. It would have been too fascinating a document even though they were probably looking for something else.

"To me that's odd," Moore says.

Recovering the documents would likely be one of the most significant finds in pirate archaeology.

Who knows, perhaps there's even a map inside with an X that marks the spot.

But those who took it died a long time ago -- and dead men tell no tales.

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The real pirates of the Caribbean - CNN.com - CNN

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Diane Palmer has spent 25 years fine tuning her outdoor escape into a Caribbean paradise at her Naples Park home Tuesday, May 23, 2017 in Naples. (Photo: Luke Franke/Naples Daily News)Buy Photo

Step into Diane Palmer's Naples Park backyard and you're transported to the Caribbean.

The bougainvillea and the yellowmandevilla blooms have taken over the fence line. She likes it to look wild, like it does on the islands.

"It's not manicured," she said. "I like that. It looks like a bouquet."

Coconut and areka palms shoot up to the sky, and a towering mango tree has started to sproutits sweet fruit. Metal stars and spheres hang from the branches.

"It's our tropical paradise," said Palmer, a former Head Start teacher enjoying her firstyear of retirement from Vineyards Elementary School in North Naples.

Palmer and her husband, Alan, have lived in the little yellow house with the white picketed porchfor 25 years.In Naples Park, where the property lots are a just small postage stamp, the Palmers have carved out a backyard escape dedicated to the Caribbean.

"People say Naples Park is such a small lot, you don't have much ground," she said. "But if you're out there working in the garden, it's big enough, you don't need any more. You do it yourself."

And so that's what the Palmers did.

Diane Palmer has spent 25 years fine tuning her outdoor escape into a Caribbean paradise at her Naples Park home Tuesday, May 23, 2017 in Naples. (Photo: Luke Franke/Naples Daily News)

After living in Haiti for 18years, they found a location in Naples where they could sell Haitian artwork wholesale right out of their home. Inside, they painted the walls pink Diane Palmer's favorite color and removed the screens enclosing the front and back porches.

"We felt very enclosed," she said. "In Haiti we were used to the breezes and everything being very open."

The mango tree was one-third of the size it is now, and they put up fences to add a little privacy. The Haitian influences are around every corner.

There's something about the people that arefrom warm climates...When you go to the islands they have a great outlook on life.

In Haiti, nothing goes to waste, Palmer said, so the coconuts that have fallen to the ground now serve as boundaries among the garden patches, like around the sections of kangaroo fern, theleaves spotted with spores.

Haitian artwork and sculptures scatter the patio. A babbling Buddha water fountain is surrounded by Palmer's "orchid row."Nearby, a medinilla magnifica rests in a pot, with its droopy flamingo pink blossoms one of Palmer's most exotic plants.

Even the pink paint on the walls of the patio, a sort of dusty fuschia color, is titled "Calypso ruffle." Palmer liked that name.

"We really like to travel to warm places," she said. "There's something about the people that arefrom warm climates...When you go to the islands they have a great outlook on life."

She also pays tribute to her New York roots with a section of flowers from the northeast geraniums and a hydrangea Palmer hopesto nurse back to health.

She hopes to add more to her backyard, like a small pool that's part below ground, part above ground, and a wooden pathway.

Despitea small backyard space, Palmer saidgardeners shouldn't feel limited by the size of what they plant.

"Make it your retreat," she said."When you get home, it should feel like you're somewhere else."

Diane Palmer has spent 25 years fine tuning her outdoor escape into a Caribbean paradise at her Naples Park home Tuesday, May 23, 2017 in Naples. (Photo: Luke Franke/Naples Daily News)

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'Tropical paradise' a tribute to the Caribbean in Naples Park - Naples Daily News