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Matthew Huntley: This is a decent enough result given the bland title, the bland talent and the bland marketing. I doubt the movie will end up making much more than three-quarters of its budget back domestically, but I agree it will pick up more overseas and perhaps make enough to be considered a success, however mild.

I still don't think we've seen Channing Tatum really act yet and I hesitate to even call him an actor. He's just someone who's on-screen who looks out of place. Until he can really embody a character, he's just some stiff who doesn't seem to know what he's doing.

Brett Beach: To respond first to Kim's questions, yes and yes, although I will be curious to see if Scotland's $17.5 million final gross beats out The Eagle's ultimate tally. It's gonna be close, I think! In (minor) defense of Channing Tatum, he was quite good in Dino Montiel's A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, a film I very much enjoyed and would recommend. I know he got some good notices as well in Fighting, by the same director so maybe he just needs a director who knows how to separate him from the wallpaper and pyrotechnics.

David Mumpower: More than anything else, I think we've apparently run out of good movie titles.

"Perfect."

Kim Hollis: Is there a stranger film that earned $100 million domestically than Black Swan? If so, what would be your nominee?

Reagen Sulewski: Vanilla Sky comes close, but then you had Tom Cruise pre-couch jump to sell it.

Tony Kollath: Easy explanation: Girls kissing=$$$$$$$.





Edwin Davies: To this day it still surprises me that Fahrenheit 9/11 made $119 million. Given the subject matter and the fact that Michael Moore is such a divisive figure, it seemed at the time like the sort of film that, like Bowling For Columbine, would do well for a documentary but not much beyond that.

Wait...Does this mean that "angry fat guy who dresses terribly" is an idea that is equally as likely to make money as "hot girls kissing"?

Reagen Sulewski: It would explain Paul Blart.

Brett Beach: Looking at the list of 478 does make it seem like there hasn't been anything as potentially off-putting as Black Swan that has cracked the nine-digit mark. However, taking "strange" to mean both surprising, as well as a film that you wouldn't necessarily think would get mainstream approval domestically, I would vote for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon at $128 million. 10 years later, it still has the lead over the next two closest high-grossing foreign language films (Life is Beautiful and Hero) by over $70 million. It's the Titanic of arthouse crossover films. Yes it was acclaimed and became an Oscar winner, but that certainly doesn't directly translate into a smash hit. If there is enough action, Americans will read those subtitles. I also think the previously mentioned Vanilla Sky and Fahrenheit 9/11 are good picks as well.

Edwin Davies: If we adjust for inflation and look reasonably far back, 2001: A Space Odyssey enters the conversation as a very strong contender for strangest film to earn over $100 million (in fact its total of $56.7 million in 1968 is somewhere in the region of $350 million(!) in 2011 dollars). As out there as Black Swan is, at least it has a fairly conventional narrative to hang its more extravagant aspects on. 2001 has nothing like that; it was freaky and revolutionary in 1968 and it's still a bizarre cinematic experience forty years later, even though so many films and film-makers have used its ideas and techniques to make more conventionally mainstream films.

However, I'd say that, in terms of the broader cultural context in which the two were released, Black Swan stands out more because there isn't the same sort of cultural, intellectual and chemical revolution happening that would make people gravitate to it the way that people (okay, hippies) did with 2001. I'm not sure anyone has come out of Black Swan and genuinely thought that it was a film made for them or their cultural subset.

Jerry Simpson: I'd add that if we count box office ticket price inflation over time, Fantasia is a pretty weird picture. It was animated, it has no story (it's actually a collection of vignettes), and it is dramatic, obscure and mostly classical music. Even Fantasia 2000 is pretty odd.

David Mumpower: In terms of films that are hard to define, District 9 would be in the discussion. Since it's a science-fiction movie with an excellent premise, however, I don't think its popularity is anywhere near as surprising. Comic book adaptations, animated and science fiction flicks are supposed to be weird. Without spoiling the ending for the three people who don't know it by now, I could see an argument for The Village. Shyamalan had become a brand by that point, though, so it's similar to Cruise with Vanilla Sky. This rules out the inexplicable aspects of The Last Airbender as well. What about American Beauty? One of its stories hangs on the audience watching a paper bag for a full minute. How about Pulp Fiction? I mean, the gimp alone...

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