The most expensive movie ever made at the time, with an estimated $225 million budget (a record that’s been broken around 50 times since), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest had to deliver. Despite a lukewarm critical response, moviegoers lapped it up, and it became the fastest movie to gross $1 billion worldwide and the third-highest-grossing movie ever at the time.

In second spot, The Da Vinci Code’s £760 million (£413m) helped propel Sony Pictures to over $3 billion in global box office revenue for the first time in its history. Meanwhile, Superman’s first big-screen outing in almost 20 years, Superman Returns, earned a disappointing $391 million (£212m), with Warner Bros. putting the Man of Steel back under wraps for another eight years as a result.

Most profitable movies of the 2000s: Avatar, Harry Potter and more