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Brett Beach: Maybe kind of satisfied? This seems like a film that never quite proved up to and including opening day that it needed to exist (or that it did IN fact, exist). Without Jerry Bruckheimer's backing, would Disney have wanted to make it? The thing that put me off from the start is that Jake Gyllenhaal never sold me on the fact that he was an action hero. I saw him all buffed up, I know he learned parkour, and yet in every trailer, ad, poster or movie still, he just looked kind of…silly. Muscular and yet not heroic. Tobey Maguire I could buy in bulk (bad, bad pun) but not Gyllenhaal. The fact that Mike Newell is behind the camera is almost a draw, but not quite enough. Bruckheimer gets to try again in two months with The Sorcerer's Apprentice (more family friendly with a PG rating). I wonder if he and the Mouse House are already looking ahead and worrying.

Daron Aldridge: Domestically, there is no way they could be satisfied and Reagan's reason is exactly why - here you have a $150 million movie that will not cross the now commonplace $100 million threshold domestically. This is clearly another case of the foreign receipts pulling a film from the edge of epic Pluto Nash-esque failure. It has already logged nearly $90 million internationally. Personally, my part of the country is already flirting with 100 degree temperatures, so I am not hankering for a movie with desert scapes, sweaty characters and bright sunny cinematography. Not the escapism I am looking for.

Jason Lee: The disappointment here comes not from the mediocre opening, but rather, from the hundreds of millions of dollars from lost sequels. Here we have the death of a franchise, but before the first film is even out of the gate. The lack of anything even close to consumer demand for a follow-up film is what will worry execs at the Mouse House today.

David Mumpower: What jumps off the page about this project is that we are not talking about a disaster like Bad Company, a previous Jerry Bruckheimer summer release that bombed completely. It also isn't even as good as Gone in 60 Seconds, a largely forgotten 2000 movie that earned about $102 million. As Reagen mentioned, even before we adjust for inflation, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time isn't likely to reach that same $100 million mark.

This is indicative of the fact that if they have to do the whole thing all over again, Disney passes on this project. There is too much opportunity cost ceded in failing to launch a franchise from this production. Now, one of their biggest summer titles is a non-starter and they're left hoping to recoup their losses with international revenue. It's a complete waste of time for them and for Jake Gyllenhaal, this is a bodyblow. I'm not saying he'll never get offered the lead in a major action film ever again, but the odds are greatly reduced now that North American audiences have soundly rejected him in this. It's unfortunate in that he seems to be a very funny guy and they totally sucked the life out of him to make this project rote. That's the unmistakable miscalculation here. They cast him but then they didn't demonstrate any faith in him.

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