AceShowbiz -

This summer really belongs to Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest." Fantastically collecting $407.5 million on domestic box office up to Sunday, August 27, the company's seafaring sequel has come out as the top moneymaker of this beach season according to stats released Tuesday, August 29 by the box-office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations.

Though it still has one more weekend to go at the summer box office, the flick's position on the first spot of the list will remain unshakable for it has scored far beyond the sum garnered by Disney/Pixar's "Cars" which firmly takes the second rank with a $240.6 million gross. Rounding up the top three is the third installment of X-Men franchise, "X-Men: The Last Stand" following its success in garnering $234.2 million to its pocket.

In the meantime, Ron Howard's "The Da Vinci Code" delightfully makes its way to land on number four with $217.5 million followed by "Superman Returns" which managed to earn $195.4 million. DreamWorks' animated feature "Over the Hedge" comes next after satisfyingly collecting $154.8 million in its sixth-place feedbag while "Click" taking up the seventh with $135.9 million. The rest positions, placed in order up to number ten, are secured by "Mission: Impossible 3" with $133.4 million, "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" with $127.8 million, and "The Devil Wears Prada" with $120.6 million.

For box-office purposes, the summer began in early May with the release of "Mission: Impossible 3." Movie tickets cost, on average, $6.61 a pop which turns out to be an all-time high per Exhibitor Relations. Despite this, audiences surprisingly nudged up attendance about 3 percent, from 564.9 million admissions last summer to an estimated 582.5 million while pushing up revenue more than 6 percent from $3.6 billion to an estimated $3.9 billion.