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David Mumpower: Max, here is why I think you are putting an artificial ceiling on the movie's box office upside with your last sentence. There are two factors. The first is that shiny is what sells right now. If anyone had told you six months ago that Avatar and Alice in Wonderland would earn a billion dollars in domestic revenue, you would have looked at them like they had dozens of spiders crawling out of their mouth. Tron Legacy has shiny like I cannot describe in words. This is the literal implementation of seeing is believing. The other is that December box office behavior works differently than any other time of the year. If Tron Legacy is good, word will spread immediately through viral communication. People who haven't seen Tron won't care about that aspect. They'll focus on the fact that the movie that looks good is good. Over the holidays, all consumers want is to be entertained and that rising tide lifts all boats. If Tron Legacy is perceived as the primary title in release, a possibility I cannot rule out at the moment, I Am Legend box office is not impossible. Right now, I understand the desire to be conservative with your estimate but I also believe it's an imperative for us as box office analysts to keep our minds open to all possibilities. If there are more Tron Legacy trailers coming that improve on this one, it will earn $100 million in days, not weeks.

Michael Lynderey: If what you say is true, I'm a little puzzled at how a sequel to what is frankly a little old movie is now pegged to be a $200m+ earner. Is it really so easy as to put shiny on screen and watch the dough roll in, or is there more to it? And if there's not, maybe my real question is, did the movie even have to be called "Tron" or be a sequel to anything to be as (presumably) successful as it will be?

p.s.: Speed Racer.

David Mumpower: I feel we're putting that theory to the test with Tron Legacy. How much of a selling point is the best looking 3-D right now? I have said that I believe the primary selling point of Clash of the Titans is the Kraken's implementation. That was what drew people into theaters. What happens when we have a film eerily similar in terms of roots but that looks a lot better and is released during the most lucrative period on the box office calendar? This will be a fascinating box office experiment.

Michael Lynderey: I'm really speculating now since we don't have the box office results quite yet, but I have to wonder if the movie wouldn't have been bigger if it was just a new property, and didn't have the name attachment to an older film that much of its target audience has not seen? Sort of like what The Matrix did in 1999.

David Mumpower: I think I'll have to watch it before I can make the final determination on that. My instinct is that the one brief shot of Jeff Bridges' face exemplifies the perfect way to tie it back to a semi-known property. The rest of it is the eye candy that sells it as something new and different in cinematic special effects.

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