One More Shot for Ben and Jen as Movie Team

Jan. 23 -- The artists formerly known as "Bennifer" hardly proved to be the second coming of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, but we haven't seen the last of them — at least at movie theaters.

It's questionable whether Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck would have completed Jersey Girl if it had been filmed after their first film, the disastrous Gigli, became a punching bag for critics and punchline for comedians.

Nevertheless, the romantic comedy is scheduled to hit theaters March 19, and representatives for the estranged stars are saying that they'll attend the premiere, despite the embarrassment of their first project.

Ironically, the film features Affleck as the father of a precocious 6-year-old trying to rebuild his life, and Lopez as his first wife. It was filmed in the summer of 2002, when the world began thinking of the omnipresent celebrity couple as a single "Bennifer" entity.

Poster Girl for a Breakup?

Jersey Girl might be a little more promising than Gilgli. On the up side, Affleck is reunited with director and producer Kevin Smith, who worked with him on Good Will Hunting, Dogma and Chasing Amy.

But will the failure of Gigli prove insurmountable?

Already, Lopez is conspicuously absent from movie posters, leading some to believe that Miramax Films was hesitant of the erstwhile Bennifer combo as a big screen draw.

To be sure, Gigli will go down in Hollywood history as a legendary bomb, rivaling such Hollywood turkeys as Ishtar, Heaven's Gate, Shanghai Surprise and Howard the Duck.

In this ill-fated romantic comedy, Affleck and Lopez played rival gangsters who team up to kidnap a prosecutor's mentally challenged younger brother to save a mob boss from prosecution.

Sure, a lot of popular films have farfetched plots, but critics immediately insisted that Gigli was far worse than run-of the-mill Hollywood dreck.

Worst of all, the film was a financial disaster, grossing less than $6 million in the United States. Affleck alone was paid $12.5 million, and even his other less-than-aclaimed efforts, Paycheck, Daredevil and Changing Lanes, scored between $50 and $100 million.