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Helen Mirren's still got it, though.

Kim Hollis: Red, a film perhaps described as geriatric Avengers, opened to $21.8 million. In your estimation is this Summit's most successful non-Twilight project, or are we giving Red too much credit to describe it as success?

Josh Spiegel: No, the stats say that, even with just the opening weekend, Knowing remains Summit's most successful non-Twilight project, though only by a few million. I don't know how solid the legs for Red are going to be, but considering how heavily the marketing focused on it being people over the age of 40 or 50 as the stars, this is an impressive number. Clearly, lots of people of varying demographics were at the theaters this weekend (as most older releases had pretty solid drops), and Red capitalized on the older audiences who wanted something a little more visceral.

Matthew Huntley: I think we're giving Red just the right amount of credit. I see it neither as a success story nor a failure, even though I did expect it to open with more than $21 million (reason being is because every time I've sat through the trailer, audiences have been very enthusiastic about it). I guess I expected something more in line with $28-30 million.

With competition from two high-profile horror franchises coming out in the next couple weeks, I can't see Red grossing as much as Knowing to officially become Summit's second-most successful project, but I think a $75 million finish is possible, which should keep the studio satisfied and possibly be enough to warrant a sequel. It'd be interesting if Summit had another franchise on their hands.





Bruce Hall: To answer the meat of the question directly, what Josh said. Knowing still fits your criteria but despite that, the general consensus among moviegoers was that Knowing was crap. Red is tracking quite well and is receiving very positive word-of-mouth. 42% of viewers this weekend were under 30, so I am not sure it quite works to casually chalk this up to the Metamucil crowd and assume that the audience will dry up next frame based primarily on that. I don't mean to say that the observation is without merit, but were it not for Jackass I think that Red might have come a lot closer to the 30 million mark that Matthew expected. And although all the marquee names on this one are over 35, Bruce Willis is still a significant draw across most audiences.

Come on. He's Bruce Freaking Willis. And the same "dork" demographic who might be familiar with the graphic novel this movie is based on also has much love for Karl Urban. No, it isn't much, but it's something. Give the 20-something crowd a little credit. Most people old enough to vote are at least aware of most of these actors and may be more fond of them than you think. And whenever you combine an appealing cast, a slick premise, lots of physics-free action and gratuitous explosions inside a series of super-slick trailers you're going to generate significant interest from the under 30 set. And this movie really was marketed well, considering the broad audience they needed to reach for a successful weekend. It generated a lot of talk that really made you wantto see this thing, whether this week or the next.

That said, I don't know what kind of legs this flick is going to have either but there aren't any notable action flicks on the slate for 10-22. So between the Paranormal Activity sequel, Hereafter, and holdovers like Jackass, I can see it finding a niche and pulling in a respectable $10 to 12 million. With a total negative cost of just under $60 million, I imagine this one will make money back and the very least, not cost anyone their job.

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