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Reagen Sulewski: You have to think that producers came into this project knowing that the Friday the 13th scenario was possible, and that they'd still be okay with that, since it's still basically a license to print small amounts of money. We're well into the "let's cut open the goose and get all the eggs!" portion of the horror remake craze, so this isn't a particularly egregious example of this behavior. Part of me wants to hate Michael Bay for yet another reason, in cheapening the idea of horror, but you know, it's not like these franchises didn't cheapen themselves before hand.

Matthew Huntley: I am deeply disappointed by this result simply because the movie was bad and completely unnecessary. An opening in the low 30s for a movie that reportedly cost the same to make unfortunately only guarantees one thing: another remake will be made. (Kim, let's hope it's not The Evil Dead franchise, although I agree with you it's probably not immune to the "remake" bug.) The only bright side to this strong but hardly robust figure is that it will totally collapse next weekend with the onslaught of Iron Man 2. But Warner Bros. must have anticipated this well ahead of time. The movie came, audiences saw, and the studio recouped its money in one fell swoop just as they probably intended. What a vicious and sleazy cycle horror remakes are becoming.

David Mumpower: I understand why everyone's outrage reflex has been triggered. Still, we had a conversation in this very column about two years ago about how we were awaiting the inevitable announcements of Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street making their triumphant (?) returns. The good news is that we are past that now and unless you count Scream, a higher class of horror franchise, or Evil Dead, only marginally a horror franchise, we're home free. All of the major properties have been re-introduced; we will of course see sequels to some of them, but this phase has largely passed. It's time for the next big thing in horror and not a moment too soon.

In terms of this particular performance, Reagen is correct that it's found money. This was the one well established horror franchise that had an owner demonstrating some protective instincts regarding the proprerty. We'd only had the one appearance of Freddy Krueger in 15 years, which means the average movie-goer who saw this film over the weekend was six-years-old or younger the last time a standalone Nightmare on Elm Street movie was released. That's an eternity in the movie industry and is in fact roughly the same gap between releases as The Godfather II to The Godfather III and Chinatown to The Two Jakes (anyone remember that train wreck?). For a staple of the horror industry, that type of gap is hard to process. It's a shame they didn't return with a better product.

Jason Lee: For every successful re-start of a franchise (Batman Begins), there's a clunker re-start (Superman Returns). And like Superman Returns, this clunker will end up with enough cash to be profitable, though it won't make any on-the-fence or even modestly-interested fans any more eager to shell out $15 to see its sequel.

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