Money doesn’t grow on trees, they say—a patent untruth, really. After all, money is still technically made of paper, which does come from trees.
Which leaves us with a salient environmental question this morning: Just how many truffula trees would need to be felled to physically make 70 million dollars?
Actually, Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax pushed to an estimated $70.7 million this weekend—a massive opening for the animated environmental fable. Despite some conservative blowback on the movie’s environmental preachiness, The Lorax bulldozed its way to by far the biggest opening weekend this year, and the biggest debut of any non-sequel film since 2010’s Alice in Wonderland. That’ll buy a lot of marshmallows for the movie’s Bar-ba-Loot bears, that’s for sure.
The Lorax’s blockbuster performance overshadowed a strong showing by the far less family-friendly Project X—a “found footage” film supposedly documenting a party that culminated in a riot, a house fire and several paternity suits. Despite being panned by the critics (and loathed by this Plugged In reviewer), the low-budget Project X cleared $20.8 million, which makes me worry that a Project Y can’t be far behind.
Act of Valor, last week’s champ, slid to No. 3 with $13.7 million, while Safe House and Good Deeds were in a virtual dead heat for fourth and fifth place, respectively. (Early estimates give Safe House a $200,000 edge, $7.2 million to $7 million, but the two pictures could flip-flop when final figures roll out later today).
This also marked the first full weekend since the Academy Awards—a time when heavy-duty winners might be expected to see a surge of business. But this year’s Oscar bumps seemed to be pretty minor: Only The Artist (five statuettes, including Best Picture) and The Iron Lady (two, including Best Actress) saw any appreciable rise in business—with The Artist potentially sneaking into the weekend’s Top 10 with $3.9 million (it’s about $100,000 ahead of Wanderlust, according to the preliminary figures). All the other major winners and nominees still in theaters saw their grosses drop.
And, of course, the quirky, black-and-white, silent Artist has only made $37.1 million total in its 15-week run—just over half of what The Lorax made in three days. Clearly, the Lorax doesn’t just speak for the trees. He speaks for movie goers, too.
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