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Where's your magic now?

Kim Hollis: The Sorcerer's Apprentice earned a modest $24.7 million in five days. What went wrong here?

Josh Spiegel: It seems unique these days when my tastes completely line up with the rest of the country's (Toy Story 3 notwithstanding, as that movie was bound to make millions). For example, I genuinely don't know why anyone wants to see Salt, a movie that looks to make a chunk of change next weekend. I also had no idea why anyone wanted to see Sorcerer's Apprentice, which had so little going for it. Yes, it's got the director, producer, and star of National Treasure, but it's not National Treasure and the movie didn't open in December. What's more, the five-day opening did no help for the film's numbers, as with Knight and Day last month. If anything, I think this movie is a great example of people choosing to wait for DVD. Does this movie look terrible from the trailers? No. Do I need to spend 10 bucks to watch it? No. That might be part of what stopped people from going.

Shalimar Sahota: Maybe kids have had enough of the cliche fantasy films? Plus, I always thought it looked a bit too Percy Jackson. It did tick all the boxes to pass for a summer blockbuster. Excellent looking effects, humorless humor and Bruckheimer as producer. However, maybe if they went with younger characters and stars, then the kids might feel that they have someone they can identify with. The casting of Jay Baruchel (at 28 years old, passing for 20) just doesn't seem to fit. Why this can only muster an opening weekend of $17 million, but The Last Airbender can break out to $40 million (fully committed fanbase?) is beyond me.





Eric Hughes: Nicolas Cage? Honestly, I don't know who in their right mind would look at the movie listings for this past weekend and go, "No, I'm going to rain check what appears to be the movie event of the summer in favor of Nic Cage with wiley professor hair and top hat.

Jason Lee: Color me confused. Like Shalimar, I thought that the movie totally looked to be in the Percy Jackson mold (an $88 million domestic finisher), and considering that this one had both a star director and the Disney brand, I was ready to see it really take off. I'm really surprised that it underperformed the way it did.

Jim Van Nest: I'm kinda surprised at the results for this as well. I know as a father and a Scout leader...this movie had some pretty heavy buzz among the boys and families I have a lot of contact with. I actually thought this might be a breakout. One thing that works against it is there's a lot of family fare out there and I know around us, people will usually wait a couple weeks to avoid the crowds of opening weekend. It's not rare for a family to be a couple movies behind the openers. Of course, this could all be crap and it could just be because people think it looks sucky.

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