'Pink Panther' strikes again

LOS ANGELES -- Inspector Clouseau bumbled his way to the top of the box office as Steve Martin's "The Pink Panther" debuted with $21.7 million to lead a rush of new releases.\nNew Line's horror sequel "Final Destination 3" ran a close second with $20.1 million, followed by Universal's animated "Curious George" at No. 3 with $15.3 million and the Warner Bros. thriller "Firewall" starring Harrison Ford in fourth with $13.8 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.\nThe overall box office rose slightly despite the Winter Olympics and a Northeast snowstorm, both of which kept many movie-goers at home. The top 12 movies took in $106.8 million, up 3 percent over the same weekend last year, when "Hitch" opened as the No. 1 movie with $43.2 million.\nAfter a slump in which attendance dropped 7 percent in 2005, Hollywood is off to a better start this year. Revenues are at a little more than $1 billion, up 8 percent from last year's. Factoring in higher ticket prices, attendance has risen 5 percent, according to box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations.\nSony's "The Pink Panther" stars Martin in the role defined by Peter Sellers, whose French detective Clouseau was the idiot-savant hero of a string of 1960s and '70s comedy hits by Blake Edwards, who continued the franchise into the '80s and '90s after Sellers' death.\nThe remake drew a broad audience, with parents and their children accounting for 51 percent of the crowds and viewers evenly divided between those older and younger than 25.