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Shalimar Sahota: Latching a bit onto what Bruce said, given the number of CG animated films, for some parents, they probably just all blur into one, making it more and more difficult to justify why they ought to go and take their children to see another so soon. Even if it's inflation adjusted as Blue Sky's worst debut, it's still a great result that many other studious would kill to have. Maybe they'll decide to leave Rio as a standalone film rather than turning it into a franchise, but it's still a hit.

Pete Kilmer : I think it's an okay result for an animated movie. While the movie was lacking a little something, families still want to see family films. What I've noticed the past year is that studios are using the worldwide box office totals more and more to hype the movie a little bit more.

Brett Beach: The goodwill of "from the makers of Ice Age" is becoming as strong a cachet as the Pixar name. Talking birds lack the inherent appeal of dinosaurs, making that $40 million opening even more impressive, especially since, as others have noted, there have been a lot of family/animated films in recent weeks. Good legs seem almost a given with the positive reviews, G rating and early audience reaction. Plus, how cool for a reunion (of sorts) for two-thirds of the Green siblings from "Get Real".

Jim Van Nest: Taking Gnomeo and Juliet out of the equation, Rio is/was the least interesting looking animated film of the group that everyone is talking about. $40 million seems like a pretty solid win. Sure, it's the inflation adjusted lowest grosser, but with the possible exception of Robots...it's the least "good" looking as well. Maybe I'm just hungover from the Toy Story 3/How to Train Your Dragon/Tangled trifecta of 2010, but Rio doesn't seem to hold a candle to those, quality-wise.

David Mumpower: As Pete touched upon, this is one of the most popular animation studios abroad, meaning that Rio is going to make money. We should always focus on that first since that's the name of the game. Having said that, this always struck me as a sub-par film concept and nothing that happened this weekend changed my opinion on this. Robots inflation adjusts to about $4 million more and we should keep in mind that they apologized for that release afterward. This is the territory we're talking about with Rio. It's a win from a financial perspective but a lot remains to be seen in terms of overall perception.

Too many cartoons? Impossible.

Kim Hollis: Do you think we're starting to reach a point of over-saturation with animation or do you think that the market can easily handle eight to ten major releases each year (which is roughly the current pace)?

Josh Spiegel: If the latter ends up happening, it'll be because studios have lowered their expectations. Unless we're talking about the latest Pixar movie or a Kung Fu Panda sequel, I don't know that animated movies are going to hit numbers higher than 40 million in a weekend (and that's with high ticket prices and likely 3D options). The market can handle a lot of animated releases, but studios can't sincerely think they'll all be massive blockbusters.

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