It seems Will Smith is all too happy to slip into the number one box office draw spot once maintained so easily by Tom Cruise among others. Smith’s latest film, “I Am Legend” soared well past industry expectations to not only open on top but to almost single handily halt a box office slump that’s been ongoing for weeks.
Smith scored his eleventh career number one opening and his seventh in a row (I Am Legend, The Pursuit of Happyness, Hitch, Shark Tale, I Robot, Bad Boys II, Men In Black II). “I Am Legend” cemented his claim as king of the box office with an estimated $76.5M on its first weekend making it the actor’s biggest opening weekend ever (by a large margin).
The film averaged a blistering $21,224 from 3,606 theaters, breaking the record for the biggest December opening in history in the process, moving past the $72.6M of 2003′s “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.” Adding to the impressive display is the fact that “I Am Legend” was the fifth best non-summer opening ever behind three of the Harry Potter films (which all came out in November) and “The Passion of the Christ” (which came out in February).
Because of the strength of the opening, this film is certain to go past $250M globally. It will make the seventh film in a row to pass that mark for Will Smith. No other actor even comes close to that record.
Warner Bros. did an impressive job of marketing this film so some of the credit must certainly go to them. They excited the core horror and sci-fi fans, but still managed to get the mass audiences to come out to see the film (no doubt Will Smith had a lot to do with that). Releasing the film in 77 Imax theaters where patrons were given the additional treat of seeing the six minute Imax prologue for next summer’s much anticipated Batman film “The Dark Knight” was also an impressive move.
If you doubt how impressive this weekend’s take really was consider this: In just three days, “I Am Legend” grossed as much as last weekend’s top fifteen films combined and helped to power this weekend’s top ten to its best performance since early August.
Video – “I Am Legend” – Trailer:
For different sizes or high definition visit Apple.com.
I saw it twice already. It was good both times. =)
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