The Lorax is the big winner of the box office this weekend, bringing in a massive 70.7 million. This is a monumental number and further proof that the concept of prime seasons being the only way a film can make bank is dead.

We are now in the thick of the ‘Spring Movie Season’ which for the last few years has yielded some of the most successful and surprising films of the years. The staggering numbers for The Lorax also represent a bit of a coming out for Universal’s animation house Illumination Entertainment, which previously won a lot of people over with the very fun Despicable Me.

The impressive haul also marks a new high water mark for Dr. Seuss adaptions, topping the previous high of 55.1 million raked in by How The Grinch Stole Christmas. The film is likely to have a decent run as well with few marquee kids films on the immediate horizon, and mixed reviews that do tend to skew a bit towards positive.

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The story of The Lorax has never felt right to me. Either the Once-ler is the most short-sighted whatsit in the world, next to the Lorax himself (or at least the forest creatures), or the entire tale is a buried parable on the importance of stable property rights. Given Seuss’s general lack of subtlety when making a political point, the latter probably isn’t the case. In any event, why does no one preserve the Truffula trees? If the Once-ler owns the forest, and his business is based on the Truffula trees, why on earth would he practice clear-cutting?

He, like pretty much every other private timber company that owns the forest they log, has an incentive to preserve the forest (unless he’s renting it from the creatures, but that doesn’t seem to be the case) – clearly the Once-ler needed to fire his business planner. Or, once the land had been deforested, should have sold it and the seed to another logging concern.

Heck, they’d probably seek him out, since Truffula trees are a hot commodity, and there’s a lot of Thneedians; we already know that one of the characters is a budding entrepreneur, it’d be a lot easier and a lot more profitable for him to replant the forest than find a way to sell air. Evidently the Thneedians don’t understand marginal utility, but that’s okay, what gets me is how Seuss (and the movie) stacks the odds in his favor.

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As much as people still refuse to admit it, Despicable Me was one of the highest grossing films (prior to Potter) of 2010. Since it’s July release date, the film has grossed over $500 million worldwide. That’s not much to scoff at, and now the studio is having at it again with a brand new film called Hop.

The movie is an interesting spin on growing up, told with the help of a cocky Easter bunny, played by Russell Brand. Here’s the official synopsis.

Blending state-of-the-art animation with live action, Hop tells the comic tale of Fred (James Marsden), an out-of-work slacker who accidentally injures the Easter Bunny (voiced by Russell Brand) and must take him in as he recovers.  As Fred struggles with the world’s worst houseguest, both will learn what it takes to finally grow up.

Though the blending of CGI and live action has left a bad taste in our mouthes in the past, (looking at you, Garfield 2: Tale of Two Kitties), this could prove to be a change in pace, as Illumination Entertainment, the studio behind Despicible Me is taking the reins from here.

Check out the very first trailer after the jump and catch Hop in theaters on April 1st.

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The offbeat, swirly, Gothic-lite, snow-filled reign of Tim Burton will never let up. According to Deadline Hollywood Daily, Universal’s Illumination Entertainment has snagged the rights to Charles Addams’ original The Addams Family cartoons with an eye to letting Burton direct a stop-motion feature out of them. Why yes, the term “3D” is also being tossed around. Yay.

I love The Addams Family. I was unhealthy obsessed with the Barry Sonnenfeld film as a pre-teen, and I used to hang out at the bookstore reading the original cartoon collections. It was the closest I got to becoming a Goth.  While I’ve enjoyed a lot of Burton films over the years, I’m not sure I want to see the Addams sent through The Burton Factory, and made out to be a family with a penchant for swirls and black and white stripes.

DHD notes that Burton will ignore the previous films and television show, and return straight to the source.  Apparently, he’s quite drawn to the sharp wit of the original comics. And they are funny. Much funnier than Burton’s Addams imitation, The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy which is just kind of gross and painful to read.

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