Will Ferrell’s Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby is going to be absolutely huge. I caught it last night in Westwood with an all-media crowd, and it slayed. Whereas Anchorman
was hilarious but in many ways a formless blob, this movie is better plotted
and a marked step forward for scribe-turned-director Adam McKay. It
will certainly be Ferrell’s biggest opener, easily besting the $31 million bow for 2003’s Elf,
and while I don’t follow tracking gossip with any degree of regularity,
in my opinion it’s not insane to think a $50 million weekend is within
reason. Rumor has it that Universal’s move of Accepted from August 11 to August 18 had at least something to do with wanting to give Talladega Nights another week to breathe.