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National Whosawhat now?

Kim Hollis: We had a survey last week asking which would be bigger between I Am Legend and National Treasure: Book of Secrets. Most of us said Book of Secrets. Would you like to change your answer?

Max Braden: I picked I Am Legend to open bigger but Book of Secrets to finish bigger. Unless National Treasure opens bigger than I've been thinking, I'm now... no wait ... but ... hey, they're both winners in my book.

Pete Kilmer: National Treasure 2 is the only other movie right now that can pull me away from playing Mass Effect on the Xbox.

David Mumpower: Like Max, I said that I believed I Am Legend would win the battle, but National Treasure: Book of Secrets would win the war. At this point, I'm pretty sure I'm wrong. I Am Legend looks like a $200 million earner. I don't see the National Treasure sequel making that type of box office domestically.

Kim Hollis: I didn't choose last week, so I can't give a real answer. However, I hate National Treasure and was always rooting for I Am Legend to win. Just wanted to get that out there.

Reagen Sulewski: I'll be interested to see if Legend can keep this up. I think National Treasure 2 could potentially catch up by its third weekend.

Joel Corcoran: I'm playing The Grinch here. Given the performance of Alvin and the Chipmunks, I simply will not underestimate the general public's adoration for running to the theater to see utterly crappy movies that just happen to be well-packaged and marketed to the hilt. I'm really glad to see I am Legend do so well because it is a genuinely great movie in virtually all aspects. But I'm cynically going to say that National Treasure: Book of Secrets will beat it in the end.

Return of the Fresh Prince

Kim Hollis: Which impresses you more, The Lord of the Ring: Return of the King's opening of $72.6 million from 3,703 venues in 2003 or I Am Legend's $76.5 million from 3,606 venues in 2007?

Max Braden: Return of the King's numbers were almost a given because it was the third in a very successful series. You could look at The Fellowship of the Ring, which earned $74 million over its first five days in December of 2001. The Tolkien series was a known property but a risky genre to pull off, and Smith is a known star with an uncertain story. I think both exceeded expectations. The real mind blower is Alvin and the Chipmunks...

Pete Kilmer: Smith vs. Zombies. That's all they needed to pitch the studio I'm sure. With LOTR 3 you had the third in a very engrossing and emotional film series (Hey, George Lucas...remember when you used to make those?) and with Legend...you had Smith vs. Zombies. I guess I'm surprised by how high Legend grossed this weekend.

David Mumpower: This is a much more complicated question than it might seem on the surface. Return of the King has a number that inflation-adjusts to $80.7 million, which beats I Am Legend straight up. It also did not get ticket sales skew of IMAX the way that the Will Smith title has. Where it has a huge advantage is in being the final movie of a franchise that had two previous $300+ million earners. So, the debate lies in whether it is more impressive to sell more tickets or leverage an unknown property into record setting opening weekend revenues. I am inclined to believe the latter. The success of Return of the King was always just a matter of degrees. I Am Legend's performance could have gone a lot of different ways. It's broken the record and it deserves all the glory for that.

Kim Hollis: Given that the first two films in the Lord of the Rings series were juggernauts in their own right, I think the edge has to go to I Am Legend here. Yes, the IMAX has some effect, but still.

Reagen Sulewski: I think Legend is more impressive. King was already a known quantity by that point. There was the three hour length of that to deal with but it had much better reviews and a broader target audience that wouldn't be freaked out by the premise.

Joel Corcoran: Even though I'm a model Lord of the Rings fan-boy, I also have to give the edge to I am Legend. I agree that Return of the King was part of a known franchise, but you also have to look at the fan base. The Lord of the Rings franchise was a risky venture only because there was a high risk of alienating an extensive and incredibly devoted group of fans that had accumulated over decades. I am Legend is based on a single science fiction pulp novel that many people have enjoyed reading, but most people have never heard of. By the time Return of the King came out, not only were the fans utterly raving with joy over how good the adaption was, the whole Lord of the Rings mystique had become part of the pop culture zeitgeist (witness Gollum appearing at the MTV Movie Awards). However, I am Legend had to start with virtually no fan base at all, no vibrations in the pop culture, no popularity at all, really. The fact that Will-Smith-in-a-zombie-movie beat out a mythology with broader and deeper appeal than Star Wars is pretty amazing.

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