The Pirates of the Caribbean sequel has sailed to the top of the UK and Ireland box office chart after the best UK opening weekend of the year. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, with Johnny Depp, took £11.47m from Friday to Sunday, according to Screen International figures.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban holds the record for a UK and Ireland opening, taking £23.9m when it was released in 2004.

 

The film industry continues to fret over competition from video games, home entertainment systems and the Internet, but the recovery provides evidence that going out to see movies on a giant, communal screen remains a central part of the American leisure experience.

 

But that's because Hollywood is trying harder.

 

The UK's movie download scene is to brighten with the Wippit online music store signing a deal with Universal to offer download-to-own features. The link-up will bring a welcome range of new releases, including King Kong and Jarhead, as well as some back-catalogue films available for UK downloaders when it launches later this month.

 

The new Pirates Of The Caribbean film took a record-breaking £2.3 million at the UK box office on day one of its release, figures have shown. It is Disney's biggest ever first day opening.

 

Whilst the Big Studios grapple with Apple over pricing, independent filmmakers are racing ahead to exploit this emerging revenue stream. Now independent producer HARP28 has released a segmented feature-film, Crooked Features, for digital download in conjunction with Lulu, the world's fastest-growing provider of print-on-demand books and hosted digital video pay-to-downloads.

 

The Rediscovered -Older Filmgoers- Still Count as Bums on Seats

 

When Hollywood marketing gurus speak about "the older audience," they generally don't mean older by much. Box office tallies, for instance, are often reviewed with an eye to the percentage of moviegoers over and under the age of 25. Yet change is afoot. Some filmmakers and smaller distributors have discovered a secret society of mature moviegoers, and they have decided that this audience may actually be worth courting.

 

The Works U.K. Distribution has secured UK rights to the new movie Shortbus. A sexually explicit, strikingly artistic and ultimately hopeful new film, "Shortbus" is the story of a group of New Yorkers, straight and gay, male and female, coping with life and love in the modern day big city. They come together weekly at a Brooklyn salon that is both polysexual and bohemian, which features music, art and yes, sex. The follow-up to Mitchell's Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Shortbus features an ensemble cast who workshopped the project and engage in graphic on-screen sex scenes.

A Spirit of Independence award-winning feature, shot with Panasonic DV cameras, costing less than $7,000 open this weekend in the US. The cameras were sold on eBay to finance post production. Cavite was filmed guerrilla-style in the Philippine city of that name by Asian-American co-directors Ian Gamazon and Neill Dela Llana. James MacGregor looks at cross cultural filmmaking in the Philippines.