Rumored paramours Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie made a golden couple at the North American box office on Sunday as their thriller "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" topped the weekend rankings.
Meanwhile, second-weekend ticket sales were disappointing for boxing drama "Cinderella Man," whose star Russell Crowe was arrested in New York last week after police said he threw a telephone at a hotel clerk.
Overall ticket sales tumbled for a 16th consecutive week.
"Mr. & Mrs. Smith," a domestic thriller in which Pitt and Jolie play married assassins ordered to kill each other, earned an estimated $51.1 million in its first three days beginning on Friday, said distributor 20th Century Fox.
The News Corp. -owned studio had hoped to do better than $40 million, and the actual number represented career bests for Pitt, Jolie and its director, Doug Liman. The film cost about $110 million to make, Fox said.
A Fox official declined to speculate whether tabloid tales about an off-screen romance between the two actors helped drive sales. Pitt's previous best opening was 2004's "Troy" with $46.9 million, while Jolie's was "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" with $47.7 million in 2001. Liman bettered his previous best, "The Bourne Identity" which opened with $27.1 million in 2002.
"Smith" made more than the next three films combined: last weekend's champ "Madagascar" with $17.1 million, "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith" with $14.9 million; and the Adam Sandler comedy "The Longest Yard" with $13.5 million.
The top 10 featured two other new releases. Director Robert Rodriguez's whimsical children's story "The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D" opened at No. 5 with a modest $12.5 million. "The Honeymooners," an urban-oriented remake of the old TV sitcom, came in at No. 7 with a lowly $5.8 million.
"Cinderella Man," a Depression-era drama in which Crowe plays plucky pugilist Jim Braddock, fell two places to No. 6 with $9.5 million, losing 48 percent of its disappointing opening-weekend crowd as its total rose to $34.5 million. It cost about $88 million to make.
"We believe in this movie, but we're obviously disappointed," said a spokesman for the film's distributor, Universal Pictures.
The studio had hoped the Ron Howard-directed film would follow a similar trajectory to that of the 2003 horse-racing drama "Seabiscuit,," which opened with $20.8 million and dipped just 16 percent the following weekend, buoyed by strong word of mouth.
Unfortunately for Universal, much of the recent chatter about "Cinderella Man" related to Crowe's arrest last Monday. Crowe has apologized, and a spokesman said the phone hit a wall, not a person.
Universal Pictures is a unit of NBC Universal, which is majority owned by General Electric Co.
After three weekends, the animated "Madagascar" has earned $128.4 million and "The Longest Yard" $118.1 million. Fox's "Star Wars" film has pulled in $332.1 million after four weekends.
"Madagascar" was produced by DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc., and released by DreamWorks Studios, a unit of closely held DreamWorks SKG. "The Longest Yard" and "The Honeymooners" were released by Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom Inc. . "The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl" was released by Dimension Films, a unit of Walt Disney Co.'s Miramax Films.
