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Kim Hollis: Not to be all correct-y, Tom, but Hoot only earned $11 million total (versus a $15 million budget) and Mars Needs Moms hasn't yet earned what either Wimpy Kid did on opening day. You know, the original is a good little movie that delivers exactly what its audience is hoping for. I've heard lots of parents comment about how much their children enjoy the books and the film franchise, and it doesn't really surprise me that they all came back out to see another film. It's very relatable, and that means a lot to kids who are struggling through being misunderstood at that age.

Reagen Sulewski: Matt has hit upon the most crucial element of keeping a kid's franchise viable: volume and speed. Get those films out as fast as you can, because both your actors and your audience are aging rapidly. Although Rugrats didn't have the first problem, it's a classic illustration out of how quickly the air can run out of your balloon - in five years its opening weekend dropped by almost two thirds.

That's more an explanation of why this didn't fall than why it won the weekend - which in this case is more about Wimpy Kid being there to pick up the fumble and run it in than it is about the film itself. It did about what you'd expect, but Sucker Punch didn't.

Brett Beach: I look to the near 40% increase from Friday-to-Saturday to explain that some parents may have been on the fence about this (even with no real other options in sight) but that a positive word-of-mouth (?) built up that it was more of the same of the first and that it was all right to take the kids to/the 90 minutes would pass fairly painlessly. I too concur with Matthew about getting this out quick enough to keep the franchise in the audience's mind and to keep as much of the cast the same as possible. Any inside jokes to Chloe Moretz' absence? I am guessing not...

Edwin Davies: The speed at which they have managed to get the sequel out is key here since there is a very small window within which you can rely on that same audience showing up for them. There was some discussion when High School Musical 3 came out about whether or not Disney waited too long to move the series from the small to the big screen, even though it was only a matter of a year, since the audience that made the series such a hit on television had probably outgrown it in that space of time, with not enough younger kids coming up to replace them. When you have a series which is aimed at a fairly young demographic there is a very real chance that they will get bored of it and move on to something else. It's a clear case of the studio striking whilst the iron is hot and being rewarded.

Sucker Punch, indeed

Kim Hollis: Sucker Punch, the...well, whatever the hell Sucker Punch is, became the worst live-action opener of Zack Snyder's career, taking in $19 million. How surprised are you by the sub-$20 million opening? What do you think went wrong?

Josh Spiegel: At a certain point, reviews matter. From the old guard to the new guard, it seems like most critics hated, hated, HATED this movie (to steal a phrase from Roger Ebert). Even if the movie looked tailor-made to the Comic-Con crowd, I think some of the target audience realized that just about no one who saw it liked it, or very few people enjoyed it. I'm not terribly surprised at the number, as the film also has no big stars to draw in audiences. While 300 also didn't have huge stars, it also had guys kicking ass. While watching girls kick ass can be empowering and fun, not every geek wants to watch an action movie with no male leads. Oh, and also, at least from my point of view, Sucker Punch looked uniquely awful. So there's that.

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