Sunday, March 2, 2008

Ferrell sports comedy misses mark at box office

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -
Will Ferrell's latest sports comedy
ran afoul of moviegoers and is on track to become one of his
worst performing movies, according to preliminary sales data
issued on Saturday.

"Semi-Pro," in which the comedian plays the flamboyant
owner of an underdog team in the now-defunct American
Basketball Association
, opened at No. 1 with estimated earnings
of $5.45 million on Friday, tracking firm Box Office Mojo said.

It is on track to earn about $14 million for the
Friday-to-Sunday period, based on the multiples for his last
two sports spoofs, 2007's "Blades of Glory" and 2006's
"Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby." Industry
observers had expected "Semi-Pro" to open above $20 million for
the weekend.

That would make it his worst opening since the $13.4
million start for the quirky black comedy "Stranger Than
Fiction
" in November 2006. But that movie opened on 2,264
theaters, while "Semi-Pro" is in 3,121 theaters.

"Blades of Glory" earned $33 million during its first
weekend, and "Talladega Nights" $47 million. Both those had
teen-friendly "PG-13" ratings, while "Semi-Pro" was hampered by
an "R" for language and some sexual content.

The film was released by Time Warner Inc's New Line Cinema,
where officials were not immediately available for comment.
After a string of costly duds, most recently "The Golden
Compass
," New Line is being downgraded to a unit of Time
Warner
's Warner Bros. Pictures studio. It's a grim fate similar
to the one faced by Ferrell's fictional Flint Tropics ABA team.

Elsewhere last weekend's champ, the assassination thriller
"Vantage Point," was No. 2 on Friday with $3.7 million. "The
Other Boleyn Girl
" opened at No. 3 with $2.8 million, in line
with modest expectations for the Scarlett Johansson-Natalie
Portman
royal romp. Both movies were released by Columbia
Pictures, a unit of Sony Corp.

The studios will issue weekend estimates on Sunday.

(Reporting by Dean Goodman)

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