The Box Office

In the Friday prelims, Will Ferrell's latest sports epic takes the top spot, while The Other Boleyn Girl takes #3 ...

All of the older titles move down a notch or two. (Nothing stays dominant in the early months of the year. The holidays are long over. And Titanic was a long time ago ...)

Update: Ferrell takes #1, but the press is pointing out that it's a kind of weak opening weekend:

... while Will Ferrell's basketball comedy Semi-Pro finished at No. 1, you could hardly call its victory a slam dunk.

The R-rated farce grossed a weak $15.3 mil, according to Sunday's estimates, a total that is only about half as much as what most prognosticators (including yours truly) thought it would accumulate. That's among Ferrell's poorest debuts ever as a lead star ...

So, like penguin movies in animation, Ferrell can only do so many sports films before audience fatigue sets in.

Elsewhere in the chart, the Boleyn sisters ended up at #4, taking in $8.3 million, and Penelope, the other debut collected half that at #8.

On the animated feature front, the action is quiet to the point of being comatose.