Box Office: Horton Hears Talk Of A Sequel

In honour of St. Patrick’s day, we invite you to revisit the Crichton Leprechaun, peruse the screensavers and wallpapers available for download at colinfarrell.org, and dive into that bowl of cornflakes before the green beer turns them soggy. And while you’re at it, have some box office numbers for good luck:1. Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! – $45.1 million
“It’s a who-mongous opening,” Fox senior VP of distribution Chris Aronson said about their CGI adaptation of the classic Dr. Seuss book bearing the moral, “A person’s a person no matter how outlandish their schizophrenic hallucinations regarding tiny societies inhabiting a speck of dust.” Fox can trumpet their who-horns as loudly as they please, as Horton lays claim to the biggest opening of 2008, and fifth-biggest opening of a children’s animated movie of all time. That all but guarantees a long run of equally successful sequels, sending Fox execs to their dry-erase boards to conjure up all new who-prefixed synonyms (”who-uge!” “who-pping!”) for the boastful concept of “shitload-earning.”

2. 10,000 B.C. – $16.415 million
There was a precipitous fall of 54% from its opening weekend for Roland Emmerich’s exhaustingly researched retelling–like HBO’s John Adams, more a historical documentary than a movie, really–of the days J.Lo video background-dancers hunted woolly mammoths. That suggests to us that audiences might prefer a touch of fantasy and whimsy thrown in with their history lessons. Oh well–something to think about for next time, Emmerich!

3. Never Back Down – $8.61 million
7. Doomsday – $4.743 million
The surprise sleeper of the week came from Djimon Hounsou-slumming, martial arts drama Never Back Down, with Summit Entertainment greatly underestimating the number of gay men who’d gather around the movie in a circle, waving disposable income in the air and cheering on a half-naked Sean Faris and Cam Gigandet as they faced off in ultimate fighting duel, The Beatdown. (First rule of The Beatdown: Everyone wins!) Doomsday, meanwhile, underperformed for Universal/Rogue Pictures, with only the rare moviegoer taking up the offer, “Hey, honey–what about this really hacky-looking rip-off of The Road Warrior?”

4. College Road Trip – $7.893 million
Road Trip marks the second installment of what will eventually come to be known as Martin Lawrence’s Family Journeys Trilogy, which began with Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins, and will end later this year with Driving Grandma Josephine To Her Grave, in which Lawrence will play all parts including the titular, [spoiler alert!!!] not-quite-dead corpse.

5. Vantage Point – $5.4 million
We’re rubbing a four-leaf clover hoping this is Vantage Point’s last week in the top five, as we ran out of multi-P.O.V. presidential-assassination thriller jokes about movies we’ve never seen pretty much in Week One.

• BOX OFFICE MOJO WEEKEND BOX OFFICE March 14-16, 2008 [Box Office Mojo]