Weekend box office: America's love affair with Will Smith persists

By Scott Tobias | December 18, 2006 | 4:00pm

Aux Features Newswire

Proof that Will Smith's drawing power should never been underestimated, even if he's starring in a middling movie-of-the-week that wouldn't be out of place on the Lifetime network, The Pursuit Of Happyness was the unexpected box-office champion over the weekend with a robust $27 million take. The poorly reviewed dragon fantasy Eragon benefited from Lord Of The Rings withdrawal for a solid second place finish at $23.5 million. Coming a distant third, the week's other big opener, a new live-action version of the children's classic Charlotte's Web, opened weakly at $12 million, despite a celebrity voice cast that includes Julia Roberts, Oprah Winfrey, Robert Redford, and other big names.

In limited release, the highly anticipated—and trust us, really lame—musical Dreamgirls opened on three screens to an absurd $120,000 per screen average, no doubt bolstered by the special $25 admission fees at New York's Ziegfield theatre. (Enjoy your glossy booklets, suckers!) Next to that performance, Steven Soderbergh's The Good German could only look feeble in comparison, though it collected a passable $15,000 per screen average on five screens, in spite of middling reviews.