'Pirates' pulls in record box-office loot

July 10, 2006

``Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" was box-office gold over the weekend, taking in a record $132 million in its first three days. The swashbuckling sequel, starring Johnny Depp as boozy buccaneer Jack Sparrow, sailed past the previous all-time best debut, ``Spider-Man," which took in $114.8 million in its first weekend. ``Dead Man's Chest" did nearly three times the business of its predecessor, ``Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," which took in just $46.6 million on its opening weekend in 2003. ``Dead Man's Chest" raked in nearly double the combined total of the rest of the top 12 movies . The previous top film, ``Superman Returns," fell to No. 2 with $21.85 million, down 58 percent from its opening weekend.

Former Olympic gymnast Shannon Miller is divorcing her husband of seven years. Miller, 29, and Christopher B. Phillips, 33, married in a lavish ceremony that featured many of her teammates from the 1996 US squad that won the team gold medal in the Atlanta Games. She filed for divorce in May 2004, but money disputes dragged the case out more than two years. The divorce is expected to become official in September. Phillips, an eye surgeon in Boston, alleges that Miller (inset) had an affair with a married male athlete and that she threatened to accuse him of abusing prescription drugs if he didn't agree to her demands during the divorce proceedings. ``I've been put through the wringer over this," Phillips said. ``It's been a very bitter and terrible divorce." Miller, who also hosts a gymnastics show on CN8, denied the accusations, calling them ``lies and innuendo surrounding an emotional divorce."

The American soprano fired by the Royal Opera House because of her weight has been rehired after undergoing stomach surgery and losing 135 pounds, her spokeswoman said yesterday. Deborah Voigt, one of the world's top opera singers, had lost her part in Richard Strauss's ``Ariadne on Naxos" in 2004 because the Royal Opera House decided a slimmer singer would be better. She now has a contract to return to the role in the 2007- 08 season, the Royal Opera confirmed.

FROM WIRE SERVICES

Who's counting?
"She is like a little child. She is pretty happy."
Brigitte Nielsen's spokesman Luigi Balduini, talking about his client's latest marriage -- it's her fifth or sixth, depending on whom you believe -- to 28-year-old Italian Mattia Dessi