BEIJING, July 4 (Xinhuanet) -- The 2003 film "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl", a 650 million U.S. dollars worldwide success, handed its Hollywood makers a devil of a dilemma: How the heck to top it?

    To meet the challenge, director Gore Verbinski and writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio fought fire with fire. For sequel "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," they fought their devil of a dilemma with the devil of the sea -- Davy Jones.

    Action-adventure film "Dead Man's Chest," starring Johnny Depp as pirate Captain Jack Sparrow, sails into U.S. movie theaters last Friday as perhaps the most widely anticipated movie of Hollywood's lucrative summer season.

    On its face, that should be good news for the movie backed by The Walt Disney Co, but any Hollywood executive worth his sea salt knows that high expectations can lead to huge disappointment if movies fail to meet expectations.

    "We always said with the first movie, our chief weapons were low expectations and the element of surprise," writer Elliott told reporters. "In this, we don't have the low expectations."

    Indeed, audience hopes are high. At Movietickets.com, for instance, advance ticket sales for "Dead Man's Chest" were nearly 20 times greater than those for the first film.

    All the main characters are back for "Dead Man's Chest," including good Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and his lady love Elizabeth Swann ( Keira Knightley). But their tale is as much a ghost story under the sea as it is nautical adventure on top, and the special effects are supercharged.

    There will be one more "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie after this. Disney is said to have spent $450 million making No. 2 and No. 3 at roughly the same time. Enditem

    (Agencies)