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It's probably the giant, floating, dinosaur balloon

Kim Hollis: Eight of the 30 largest openings of all-time have come in the last three months. What is the explanation for this?

Tim Briody: The summer of the three-quel accounts for most of them, the fifth Harry Potter entry and some of the most anticipated non-sequels in years have all come during this time period. I'd almost be more surprised if this wasn't the case.

David Mumpower: I'm going to disagree with Tim to an extent here. 300, The Simpsons Movie and The Bourne Ultimatum are not movies people expected to open to $70 million. Four of the titles (Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) were expected to do this. Transformers was not a shock by any stretch. Those other three are titles that faced long odds to attain that type of debut. The reasons for it are basically six years worth of box office trending since $70 million became the big debut total back in 2001. We've got ticket price inflation as well larger cineplexes capable of herding in more consumers, and venue counts in excess of 4,000 are no longer shocking. It's the entirety of box office behavior encapsulated in these eight performances.

Kim Hollis: I also think there's a lot to be said for having a number of quality films released during the summer time frame. People just don't want to go out to see crap anymore (see: Hot Rod). They need a driving reason to pull them into theaters and I think that is being reflected in the big numbers our blockbusters are seeing this year.

Sorry, Harry.

Kim Hollis: We have had four openers in 2007 that fell in the range of $70 to $79 million - The Bourne Ultimatum, Transformers, The Simpsons Movie and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Rank them in terms of how impressed you are by their opening weekends and give an explanation why.

Joel Corcoran: I'd put Transformers first in terms of most impressive, then The Bourne Ultimatum followed very closely by The Simpsons Movie and, finally, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Nothing really surprised me about Harry Potter's opening weekend, and it's the least impressive of the bunch compared to past performances of films in the franchise. The box office take was a bit lower than I expected, but I think the lower return compared to Prisoner of Azkaban's opening in June 2004 ($93.7 million) can be attributed to a bit of mid-summer malaise and some weariness among fans. The Simpsons Move and The Bourne Ultimatum had equally impressive opening weekends, but for different reasons. I didn't think the Simpsons style and pacing of humor would translate to the big screen, and I was proven wrong. And the fact that The Bourne Ultimatum pulled in as much revenue on its opening weekend as the previous two movies combined is equally astounding. But overall, I have to give the edge to the Transformers. The only thing this movie had going for it was a sense of nostalgia from boys who hit middle school in the mid-80s to mid-90s, and there were a lot of factors cutting against it: a relatively unknown cast, an opening in the middle of films from proven franchises, and a director who's last film (The Island) arguably was the biggest bomb at the box office since Ishtar. The fact that Transformers will end up with one of the top-10 opening weekends of 2007 is just astounding.

David Mumpower: I strongly suspect we will universally agree upon Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix being the least impressive due to the fact that it's a smallish opening for the series. This is skewed by the mid-week opening of $44.2 million prior to the weekend, but in terms of openers, it's expected performance if not disappointing. Transformers is third most impressive in that everyone expected it to be a juggernaut ever since the trailer came out. The only question would be how high. This leaves the choice of most impressive as a race between The Simpsons Movie and The Bourne Ultimatum. Given the fact that the latter franchise had already hit the $52 million range, I don't see it quite as impressive as The Simpsons Movie. Of course, we we flip the discussion to final box office, The Simpsons Movie flips to the bottom, Order of the Phoenix is in the middle, Transformers is most impressive and Bourne Ultimatum is To Be Determined.

Reagen Sulewski: I think I'm a little more impressed by Bourne's opening, seeing as how it's nearly triple what The Bourne Identity opened to. The Simpsons are a cultural icon where Bourne is not, at least yet. It was surprising at the power that The Simpsons still had after 18 years (or maybe because of it), but for Bourne to increase each outing is something special. Transformers is the third most impressive as the most traditional action-film of the bunch, with Potter "just" doing what we expected it to do.

Shane Jenkins: I'm with David on this one. I think The Simpsons was more of a wildcard than these others, given the lackluster quality of the show in recent years. That Fox was able to create a must-see event out of a long-running show that is still on the air (and showing for free) is some kind of impressive.

Many people feel like this Bourne will be the last, or at least the last with Damon, and that created an urgency to see it this weekend. The numbers are terrific, but not quite as unexpected, given that it's the third chapter in an extremely popular and well-reviewed series.

If you hadn't seen any footage for Transformers, you would probably not have anticipated a movie based on a toy would turn into such a box office sensation. But one look at those trailers and all bets were off (even if the movie itself didn't live up to them).

Harry Potter's a little like Lisa Simpson and her consistently excellent report cards. "$77 million? Oh, that's great honey." *pat pat* I'm not saying that it's fair; it's just not very surprising.

Kim Hollis: I'm going to go with Bourne at the top, because while I expected it to increase some over its predecessor, I thought it was pretty close to reaching most of the fans it was going to find, particularly as it's so adult. Next would be The Simpsons Movie, because I actually thought it would open that well, but there were certainly some questions when the tracking came out. Transformers was also no big surprise to me. The trailers killed and people were easily up for an original special effects extravaganza. And poor Harry does finish last, simply because this was exactly in line with what should be expected from the franchise.

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