U.S. actor Will Smith plays the drums during the premiere of his film 'I Am Legend' in Hong Kong December 7. - REUTERS
LOS ANGELES (Reuters):
The last man on Earth was first at the weekend box office in North America as Will Smith's sci-fi thriller I Am Legend crushed the competition with a record opening, distributor Warner Bros. said on Sunday.
The film brought in $76.5 million and was the seventh consecutive chart-topper for the versatile Smith. It combined with a surprisingly strong $45 million debut for Alvin and the Chipmunks to end the box office's five-week losing streak, even as severe winter storms across the Midwest and Northeast hurt ticket sales.
I Am Legend ranks as the best December opening of all time, beating the $72.6 million start for Lord of the Rings: Return of the King in 2003, the Time Warner Inc.-owned studio said. The studio said it had hoped for an opening in the mid-$40 million range.
Smith plays a military virologist who has survived a human-made virus that apparently killed everyone else on the planet. Music video veteran Francis Lawrence directed the film, working from an adaptation of a 1954 novel by Richard Matheson. It was originally envisaged as a vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger and director Ridley Scott in the early 1990s.
Alvin and the Chipmunks squealed its way to No. 2 with $45 million, more than doubling the expectations of its distributor, Twentieth Century Fox.
Great for the family
The film combines real actors, led by Jason Lee, with animated renderings of Alvin, Simon and Theodore, the beloved helium-voiced singing trio. The News Corp-owned studio said the film played strongly with family audiences, as expected, but also drew plenty of young-adult viewers.
Overall ticket sales rose 36 per cent from the same period last year to $163 million, according to tracking firm Media By Numbers. Sales for the year stand at almost $9 billion, a five per cent boost from last year, thanks solely to higher ticket prices. Late-fall sales have been soft as films such as incumbent champion The Golden Compass and a slew of serious fare like Tom Cruise's Lions for Lambs failed to connect with moviegoers.
The Golden Compass fell to Number 3 with just $9 million, losing about two thirds of its opening-weekend audience, one of the biggest slides of the year. In recent weeks, chart leaders have fallen between 40 per cent and 50 per cent in their second rounds.
New Line Cinema's $180 million family fantasy, starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, has earned $41 million to date. The struggling Time Warner-owned studio had hoped the film would be the first in a franchise based on British author Philip Pullman's acclaimed children's series His Dark Materials.
