LOS ANGELES - For the last man on Earth, Will Smith sure has a lot of friends. The Warner Bros. tale “I Am Legend,” starring Smith as a plague survivor who may be the last living human, debuted with $76.5 million, the biggest December opening ever and a personal best for one of Hollywood’s top box-office champs, according to studio estimates Sunday.

“It’s no wonder Will Smith feels so lonely. Everyone else on Earth is in the movie theater,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Media By Numbers.

The 20th Century Fox family flick “Alvin and the Chipmunks,” starring Jason Lee in a big-screen take on the cartoon critters, opened a strong No. 2 with $45 million. The two films combined to give Hollywood a year-end surge after a drowsy fall season.

“Forty-five million acorns,” said Chris Aronson, senior vice president for distribution at 20th Century Fox. “Chipmunks are diurnal animals and they do hibernate, but not right now.”

Overall business soared, with the top 12 movies taking in $153.6 million, up 39 percent from the same weekend a year earlier, when Smith also was No. 1 with a $26.5 million debut for “The Pursuit of Happyness.”

The previous No. 1 movie, New Line Cinema’s fantasy “The Golden Compass,” nose-dived in its second weekend, coming in third with $9 million, down a dismal 65 percent from its less-than-expected $25.8 million debut a week earlier.

“The Golden Compass,” which cost $180 million to produce, has done $90 million so far overseas but has proven a dud domestically with just $41 million.
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Ukrainian bombshell and former model Olga Kurylenko stars opposite Timothy Olyphant in Hitman.

Based on the top-selling, award-winning videogame franchise, Hitman is a genetically-engineered, elite assassin known only as Agent 47 (Olyphant). But even 47 couldn’t anticipate a “random equation” in his life of exactitude: The unexpected stirrings of his conscience and the unfamiliar emotions aroused in him by a mysterious Russian woman named Nika (played by Kurylenko). 

In the movie, Agent 47’s hyper-orderly life and clear mind are unexpectedly complicated when he meets Nika, a Russian prostitute who stirs Agent 47’s conscience and makes him begin to question the nature of his line of work.

Kurylenko says the role helps elevate Hitman beyond typical action movie fare. “I like emotion, and the film delivers that along with great action,” she says. “When I got to the set and I saw how Xavier was directing it, that’s when I understood that it was definitely far from all the other movies based on a video game. I hope people are going to really care for the characters.”

“Nika is a catalys in 47’s internal struggle,” says producer Le Pogam. “He is in the middle of all this political turmoil, embroiled in external conflicts and dealing with people he needs to kill and with those who want to kill him. In the middle of all that, Nika appears. She is beautiful, tough and charming – and she cares about him. But he’s not used to that at all. Nobody told him that people could have natural relationships, and that turns his life upside down.”

Kurylenko recently co-starred as a lovelorn vampire opposite Elijah Wood in Paris, Je t’amie and in starring roles in Eric Barbier’s thriller Ring Finger for which she received the Best Actress award at The Brooklyn International Film Festival in 2006. She had a role in Tyranny, directed by John Beck Hoffman.

On French TV, Kurylenko appeared on the miniseries Suspectes and the drama The Good Luck Charm. In her career as a model, Kurylenko has appeard in advertising campaigns for Kenzo, Helena Rubenstein and Just Cavalli, and magazine covers of US Glamour and Marie Claire.

Distributed by Warner Bros., Hitman is now showing in theaters