THE final box-office figures for 2006 are in and, as expected, the second swashbuckler starring Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow is No 1, very closely followed by the new 007, the West Cork guerrillas and the Man in Black. Only €335,000 separates the top six films.
While the UK and Ireland are regarded as the same territory for film distribution purposes, there were some notable disparities when figures for the State are separated from the UK/Ireland takings. Sparrow and Bond are first and second on both charts, but neither of the next two biggest Irish hits, The Wind That Shakes the Barley and Walk the Line, figures on the UK/Ireland top 10, which is also the case with The Departed and The Devil Wears Prada.
Meanwhile, Apocalypto has set the first record of the New Year, for the highest opening weekend takings of a foreign-language film at the UK/Irish box-office, topping the takings of Zhang Yimou's Hero, which opened in September 2004.
Top 10 at the Irish box-office 2006
1 Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest €3.91m
2 Casino Royale €3.79m
3 The Wind That Shakes the Barley €3.70m
4 Walk the Line €3.67m
5 The Da Vinci Code €3.60m
6 Borat €3.56m
7 Ice Age 2: The Meltdown €2.38m
8 The Departed €2.12m
9 The Devil Wears Prada €1.98m
10 Superman Returns €1.85m
(Source: Carlton Screen Adver- tising/Neilsen EDI)
Big Liam swings into action
Liam Neeson will play the lead role in Taken, the second feature from French director Pierre Morel, who made one of the most distinctive debuts of last year with his exhilarating District 13. Scripted by Luc Besson with Robert Mark Kamen, Taken will star Neeson as a former soldier drawn back into action when slave traders kidnap his daughter while she is travelling in Europe.
Neeson became available for the role when Steven Spielberg committed to directing a fourth Indiana Jones movie in the summer, delaying his Abraham Lincoln biopic that will star Neeson.
Cameron returns to sci-fi
James Cameron is finally set to direct his first narrative feature film since Titanic opened to record-breaking business 10 years ago. His new project, Avatar, is an original science fiction story pitting a human army against aliens on a distant planet. Australian actor Sam Worthington (Somersault) and US actress Zoe Saldana (Guess Who) will lead the human cast. Digital technology will create a large cast of virtual characters who will convey emotion as authentically as humans, according to 20th Century Fox, which is backing the €200 million production and claims it will test new technologies on a scale unseen before in Hollywood.
Can't wait? Although Cameron has already started shooting the film, the sheer scale of the effects work dictates that Avatar won't be ready for cinema release until the summer of 2009.
The CIA-Nazi connection
Director Kevin Macdonald will follow The Last King of Scotland with My Enemy's Enemy, a documentary on Klaus Barbie, the Nazi war criminal known as The Butcher of Lyon. The film will chronicle how Barbie worked with the CIA after the war and examines claims that he and the CIA were involved in the 1980 Bologna railway bombing that took 85 lives.
When David met Tricky Dick
Peter Morgan, who shares screenwriting credit with Jeremy Brock on The Last King of Scotland, is adapting his stage play, Frost/Nixon, for a feature film to be directed by Ron Howard. The play, now running in London, stars Michael Sheen as David Frost and Frank Langella as Richard Nixon.
Sheen played Tony Blair in the latest Stephen Frears film, The Queen, which Morgan wrote, and Frears and Morgan are planning another factually based film this year. Dealing with the outspoken English football manager Brian Clough, it will focus on his tempestuous tenure as Leeds United manager in 1975, which ended after 44 days in the job.
