Da Vinci Code Continues Int'l Success

While we here in the US saw our first repeat box office champ for the first time in quite a while this weekend, watchers of the international box office don't even bother looking at the charts anymore -- they're know The Da Vinci Code is going to be on top. Despite the fact that our smart foreign friends are choosing, en masse, to watch soccer (Forza Italia!) rather than movies, those who did go to the cinema preferred Tom Hanks and his bad hair over the competition for the fifth weekend in a row. In total, the movie has now made $480 million overseas and $678.5 million world-wide, numbers that those of you who like lists will be pleased to know rank 13th and 23rd respectively all-time.

X-Men: The Last Stand, too, continued to do well internationally, thanks in large part to very successful Asian opens. The movie topped the national charts in both Taiwan and Korea, and its $4.9 million take in Korea is the most a Fox film has ever made on its debut there, due mostly to the fact that the wildly-supported Korean soccer team was idle over the weekend.