So all the excuses we've heard bandied about lately for why the multiplexes have been so deserted this autumn turn out to be bogus. No one's got money? Fans turned in droves this weekend to premium-priced IMAX theaters. Bad weather? Half the country was socked in by snow, ice, wind, and rain this weekend, and that didn't stop moviegoers from making this weekend the best ever for a December non-holiday.

And it was topped by the movie with the biggest opening for a movie in December ever... and that's counting holiday weekends. Turns out the astonishing Will Smith sci-fi horror movie I Am Legend [my review] is a license to print money for Warner Bros.: it earned a fantastical $76.5 million from Friday through Sunday, beating out the previous record holder, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which earned $72.6 million when it opened in 2003. That figure was padded out a bit by the higher-priced IMAX tickets commanded on the 77 big-format screens the flick screened on, but still: Smith's legend as the only truly bankable movie star working today has been sealed. As Rotten Tomatoes points out, this is Smith's eleventh career number one opening and seventh in a row.

But wait, there's more. The number two movie this weekend was the silly but sweet Alvin and the Chipmunks [my review], which raked in an unbelievable $45 million. Last week, predictions of $50 million for Legend and $15 million for Alvin were considered wildly optimistic.

The bounty enjoyed by Smith and the chipmunks did not extend to the other wide releases. At No. 3, for instance, The Golden Compass [my review] dropped 65 percent to take in a paltry $9 million, which has got to sting New Line.

The season's prestige films, still mostly in limited release, are doing gangbusters, though. The multi-Golden Globe nominated Atonement earned $1.9 million for the weekend, but with only 117 screens to its name, that's a per-screen average of $15,837. Juno [my review], also enjoying some Globe noms, took in $1.4 million, but it was on only 40 screens -- that's $36,000 per screen. The Kite Runner made $12,885 on each of its 35 screens, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly earned $19,933 on each of its three screens. (For comparison's sake, Legend's per-screen was $21,224, and Alvin's $12,949.)

[Box office numbers via Box Office Mojo.]

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MaryAnn Johanson (email me)
reviews, reviews, reviews! at FlickFilosopher.com

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