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Brett Beach: The puzzling mid-week opening is the big story for me here. It may have made sense if Paramount had opted to open this against Harry Potter (still an unwise decision) and wanted two days of early reviews and buzz to avoid being swamped by the behemoth (which I think is what will happen to The Next Three Days). Otherwise, they lost the chance to at least finish a spot higher in the top five. This one had been batted around on the schedule long enough that I honestly expected to see it staring out of my nearest Redbox before too long. The budget was on the low side, Ford can take solace in knowing this will at least outgross Extraordinary Measures and the good notices for McAdams help to alleviate too much of a whiff of failure.

Matthew Huntley: Another interesting note about the mid-week opening is I still see posters/billboards around town that advertise "November 12th," (instead of November 10th), so it seems the date was changed rather late in the game. Maybe the studio thought teenagers who had Veteran's Day off from school would want to check it out, but that's a bit of a stretch.

Regardless, Paramount should be disappointed by this result, especially given the caliber of talent/star power attached to the project. And yet, I can't imagine they're too surprised, since the subject matter doesn't exactly scream "cinematic," as if it had to be seen in the theater to be fully appreciated. It feels more like a DVD rental on an otherwise quiet evening. Plus, I didn't think the marketing was too aggressive in showing off the movie's funny/heartwarming scenes (if there are any). All in all, it seems like the movie was advertised as a vanilla story that happened to have some famous people in it, and audiences weren't convinced it was essential viewing.

Edwin Davies: Paramount should be kicking themselves for deciding to open it mid-week since, even though I don't think it necessarily lost money by doing it, no good can come from reports that your film earned only just over $1 million on its first day. It might not have made all that much difference in the long run, but at least it would have made for a better story to start its run than the one it got.

Apparently the film is good, not great, kind of a not-as-good Broadcast News for the 21st century, and the star power of the film might carry it far enough for it to earn its budget back, but that seems to be a best case scenario based on how it has performed so far.

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