The summer of sequels continues Friday with the very wide release of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, though both Maple Pictures and Alliance Atlantis are looking to lure at least a few moviegoers away from the charms of Johnny Depp with the latest from William Friedkin and Hal Hartley.

Maple is releasing Bug, from its U.S. partner Lionsgate, on 19 screens, while AA will unspool Fay Grim, the latest by Hartley and a follow-up to his 1997 picture Henry Fool, on one screen in Toronto.

Bug, a horror/thriller from Friedkin (The Hunted, The Exorcist), will play in English Canada in markets including Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa and Winnipeg, aiming for more adult audiences. There are no plans for a release in Quebec as of yet, according to a spokesperson at Maple. The company’s distribution partnership in the province with Christal Films is over at the end of the month, with Seville Pictures taking Christal’s place the following week.

This week will also see Mongrel Media open the British dramedy Scenes of a Sexual Nature on three screens, including Toronto’s Carlton and Kennedy Commons and Vancouver’s Tinseltown. Seville, meanwhile, is cautiously expanding the Spanish title Revolución into English Canada, where it will play in Toronto at the indie Royal theater, following its opening in Quebec last fall. A spokesperson for Seville says it hopes to add Vancouver in the next couple of weeks.

Analyst Howard Lichtman is upbeat about both the performance of this summer’s blockbusters so far and the merits of running against them.

‘I predicted 13 months ago that 2007 was going to be a record-breaking year, and that prediction was made in the middle of the slump. The first couple of weeks have proven that I’m right so far,’ he tells Playback Daily, noting that Spider-Man 3 and Shrek the Third have delivered beyond their studios’ expectations.

And yet, amid all the heavy traffic, Sarah Polley’s Away from Her added another $181,192 for the week of May 11, for a total box office of nearly $373,000. ‘It shows that counter-programming works because Away from Her is aimed at an older demographic, and a third of all moviegoers are over age 40,’ says Lichtman.

Next week, the Universal comedy Knocked Up will face the Kevin Costner-starrer Mr. Brooks from Odeon Films, and the supernatural thriller Rise: Blood Hunter, carried here by Equinoxe Films.

Coming up, Mongrel will release foreign titles including French director Luc Besson’s Angel-A on June 8 and the Japanese animation Paprika on June 15.