will ferrell (14 posts)

He has the power to repair fillings with a laser beam that shoots from his crotch. He can run the speed of an average white 40-year-old male. He fears only small dogs, which cause him to wet his shorts. He is Captain Compete (aka USC alum Will Ferrell), and he miraculously appeared on the turf during football practice yesterday. Thank God he did.

The Captain, friend of Coach Pete Carroll, showed his Trojan allegiance—and considerably more, given his stained, ill-fitting costume—catching a man plummeting from a camera tower. Only moments later, the winded, unshaven superhero doused a burning victim with Gatorade, mere seconds after the flames had already been extinguished.

Postheroics, the Captain revealed his archenemy: "That damn Notre Dame leprechaun—I live to fight him every day."

Warner Brothers

Next up: $400 million.

The Dark Knight was primed to enter a stratosphere reached by only seven films in Hollywood history after grossing an estimated $75.6 million this weekend, and surpassing $300 million domestically in record time.

Among the box office also-rans, Will Ferrell got his mojo back, while Scully and Mulder had theirs abducted.

More than anyone, Batman was again the man. Where once a $400 million overall take for the latest Caped Crusader adventure was considered a possibility, now it's considered a lock.

"Certainly, $400 million, boom, that's going to happen," Media by Numbers box office analyst Paul Dergarabedian said today.

"The trajectory it's on has never before been seen. This is absolutely unprecedented."

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JohnShearer/WireImage.com

Here's an elementary bit of casting.

Sacha Baron Cohen and Will Ferrell are set to star as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in the latest addition to the Judd Apatow canon, a comedy inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's tales of the brilliant pipe-smoking sleuth and his reliable partner in crime solving.

Tropic Thunder scribe Etan Cohen is penning the script for Columbia Pictures. Apatow and manager Jimmy Miller will produce.

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Will Ferrell's afro turned out to be more impressive than Semi-Pro's box office.

The 1970s-spoofing basketball comedy led a weak weekend field with $15.1 million, per estimates compiled Sunday by Exhibitor Relations, the worst opening for Ferrell since Elf made him big.  

Debuting in fourth place, The Other Boleyn Girl, a costume drama about a million miles, and a few centuries, removed from Semi-Pro's shorty-shorts world, was actually the Top 10's biggest hit.

Playing on fewer than half as many screens as Semi-Pro, the Natalie Portman-Scarlett Johansson effort grossed a solid $8.3 million.  

The unconventional romantic-comedy Penelope, the other major new release, didn't blossom: It opened in eighth, with $4.006 million.   

As far as the expectations game, Ferrell might have shot the biggest air ball of all the weekend's top competitors.

From 2003 through last year, the Saturday Night Live alum starred in six wide-release comedies. Each and every one, even a perceived bust such as Bewitched, opened with at least $20 million. His biggest hit, Talledega Nights, debuted with $47 million.

Then came Semi-Pro's $15.3 million.  

That afro really was something, though.

Elsewhere:

•    No Country for Old Men's success might not have been so great for Oscars' ratings, but the Oscars were pretty great for the movie's box office. One weekend after its Best Picture win, business zoomed 67 percent (ninth place, $4.005 million; $69.6 million overall).
•    Last weekend's champ, Vantage Point ($12.8 million; $41 million overall), fell to second, but didn't fall completely apart.
•    The family-fantasy film The Spiderwick Chronicles (third place, $8.7 million; $55.1 million overall) isn't blowing anybody away, but it's hanging in there.
•    Top 10 dropouts included: the romantic-comedy nonstarter Definitely, Maybe ($3.3 million; $26.2 million overall); the Best Picture loser There Will Be Blood ($1.6 million; $37.6 million overall, per Box Office Mojo); the middling Martin Lawrence performer, Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins ($2.7 million; $39.2 million overall); and, the Jack Black bust, Be Kind Rewind ($2.1 million; $7.1 million overall).
•    In limited release, Oscar's Foreign Language Film winner, The Counterfeiters ($202,000 at 18 theaters), enjoyed the weekend's best per-screen average, per Box Office Mojo. The French film The Duchess of Langeais ($21,500 at three theaters) was no slouch, either.
•    Chicago 10, the new, partly animated documentary about the 1968 Democratic Convention riots, didn't catch fire, pulling in an okay $44,800 from 14 theaters, Box Office Mojo estimated.   

Here's a recap of the top-grossing weekend films based on Friday-Sunday estimates compiled by Exhibitor Relations:

1. Semi-Pro, $15.3 million
2. Vantage Point, $12.8 million
3. The Spiderwick Chronicles, $8.7 million
4. The Other Boleyn Girl, $8.2 million
5. Jumper, $7.5 million
6. Step Up 2: The Streets, $5.7 million
7. Fool's Gold, $4.4 million

8. No Country for Old Men, $4.005 million
9. Penelope, $3.8 million
10. Definitely, Maybe, $3.3 million

Will Ferrell is ready to take the laughs on the road.

The funnyman will headline a college stand-up tour as part of a promotion for his upcoming film Semi-Pro, which is due for release from New Line Cinema Feb. 29.

"Not only will this tour make people laugh, but it's going to change lives...I think," Ferrell said of the venture.

The tour, which will take Ferrell and rising comics Zach Galifianakis, Demetri Martin and Nick Swardson to seven schools over three weeks in February, will be sponsored by Ferrell's FunnyorDie.com Website.

Dubbed Will Ferrell's Funny or Die Comedy Tour Presented by Semi-Pro, the trek is slated to kick off Feb. 4 at Kansas State University, before traveling on to Michigan State, Ohio State, Penn State, University of Rhode Island, Boston College and UNC Chapel Hill.

A video crew from FunnyorDie.com will tail the comics on the road and clips from the appearances will be posted regularly on the site, as will weekly videos of Ferrell and his Semi-Pro costar Andrew Daly.

Set in 1976, Semi-Pro stars Ferrell as one-hit-wonder Jackie Moon, who used the profits from his chart-topping song "Love Me Sexy" to fulfill his dream of owning a basketball team. Woody Harrelson, Maura Tierney and André Benjamin also star.

In addition to promoting the film, the tour aims to draw attention back to FunnyorDie.com, which enjoyed a massive debut with hit viral video "The Landlord."

Though traffic has since ebbed, some 3.5 million fans continue to visit the site each week and Knocked Up guru Judd Apatow signed on to the venture in October, further adding to its laugh-factor credibility.

All those steamy Talladega nights have led to this: Will Ferrell is a dad again.

The comic actor and his wife of six years, Viveca Paulson, rang out the old year by welcoming their second son.

Publicist Matt Labov says Matthias Ferrell made his grand entrance a little after 2 a.m. Saturday. No further birth stats were released.

The 39-year-old star of the NASCAR-themed summer hit Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and Paulson, a 37-year-old art auctioneer, tied the knot in 2000; their son Magnus will turn three in March.

While making the publicity rounds in November for his latest movie, Stranger Than Fiction, Ferrell let it slip on The Late Show with David Letterman that he was expecting another boy.

Ferrell snagged a Golden Globe nomination for his role in Stranger, a comedy about a mild-mannered tax preparer who discovers he's somehow become the subject of the new novel by a famous author (Emma Thompson).

Next up, Ferrell will be seen in the recently wrapped Blades of Glory, a farce in which he plays a disgraced Olympic ice skater who teams up with his rival, played by Napoleon Dynamite's Jon Heder, for one last shot at the gold. The film is due in March.

After some time off for diaper duty, he will show off his jump shot as the owner-coach-player of a fictional '70s basketball team in Semi-Pro, costarring André Benjamin. The film is slated for a 2008 release.