Led by the voice talents of Jim Carrey and Steve Carell, the film opened in 3,954 locations and averaged a healthy $11,406 per theater. The film generated the fourth best March opening ever behind 300 ($70.9M), Ice Age: The Meltdown ($68M), and the original Ice Age ($46.3M). Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! also landed the fifth largest opening in history for a G-rated film.

“It’s a who-mongous opening,” Fox senior VP of distribution Chris Aronson said. “Blue Sky has made a film that makes you feel like you are immersed in the pages of Dr. Seuss’ world. It is colorful and vibrant, and so true to his work.

The film, based on Dr. Seuss’ 1954 book of the same name, cost roughly $85 million to produce and marks Jim Carrey’s first starring voice role in an animated film. Industry insiders were are abuzz about the fact that the film nearly matched the opening of Ice Age despite its G rating. Generally speaking, G-rated films can be risky as older kids and teens sometimes see these films as being more for children. Horton, however, saw 47% of its audience come from non-family with teens being the largest segment of that percentage (40%) putting this Fox film on par with Disney/Pixar films.

Disney and Pixar, of course, have been the exception to the rule. Their films generally appeal to all audiences regardless of rating. Disney/Pixar, in fact, boasts the top four G-rated animated films in terms of opening weekend: Finding Nemo ($70.2 million), Monsters, Inc. ($62.6 million), Cars ($60.1 million) and Ratatouille ($47 million). All except Monsters, Inc., which debuted in November, opened in the summer.

Horton, however, couldn’t match the opening of the Dr. Seuss/Jim Carrey starrer Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which opened to $55.1 million in 2000. Horton did beat Mike Myers starrer Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat, which debuted to $38.3 million. Neither of those two Dr. Seuss films were animated.

Variety is reporting that Ewan McGregor will play the romantic lead opposite Jim Carrey in “I Love You Phillip Morris,” a dark comedy that marks the directing debut of “Bad Santa” scribes Glenn Ficarra and John Requa.

I just threw up a little in my mouth.

I guess Carrey decided he hasn’t done enough high profile (or low profile for that matter) gay roles lately so he signed up a while back to play Steven Russell, a married father whose conman ways introduced him to the Texas prison system. There, he fell in love with cellmate Phillip Morris.

This story is supposed to be based on actual events. I’m having a hard time, however, getting past the fact that one of the characters is named after a cigarette company. Maybe Russell just liked his smokes?

Anyway, McGregor, always an actor on the edge of gayness, decided to take the role of Phillip Morris. As the story goes, Russell’s love for Morris motivated his escape from prison four times, once by using a green pen and bucket of water to change his prison outfit into what appeared to be surgical scrubs, another time by faking his death from AIDS and signing his own death certificate (what kinds of jails are we running down here in Texas?). Morris eventually got out, but Russell’s escapades got him a 144-year sentence.

The moral: Gay prison love can only lead to more pain.

The fact that the writers of “Bad Santa” also wrote this make me wonder where they might take the dangling participles of this script (pun definitely intended). I mean, how do you fake your own death of AIDS and then sign yourself out? How does that even work on anything other than Family Guy? And does Ewan play hard to get? Does he just string Carrey along by flirting with him, maybe sharing his lunch, letting him wear his prison jump suit, borrow his toothbrush…or is Carrey more of a stalker? Guess we’ll have to wait and see which way this one goes.

Production is expected to begin in the spring.