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David Mumpower: I disagree that The Amazing Spider-Man should be summarily dismissed from the conversation. I accept that the film could be rejected by mainstream moviegoers. Despite this, what I know is that Spider-Man opened to $114.8 million and Spider-Man 3 opened to $151.1 million. Both of those were box office records that stood for a while. The only reason why the best film in that franchise, Spider-Man 2, is excluded is that it opened Fourth of July week and thereby had $64.2 million siphoned off from the opening weekend total. That franchise has set the opening weekend record twice and so I am withholding final judgment on The Amazing Spider-Man reboot until we see the final ads. After all, Marvel has done very well with all of their recent releases and Sony has always treated this property as the gold standard it has proven to be. Having said all of that, I mentioned in an earlier comment that the pressure is on them to justify the decision of Andrew Garfield over Josh Hutcherson after the latter gentlemen demonstrated the Midas Touch with The Hunger Games.

With regards to The Dark Knight Rises and particularly The Avengers, I absolutely believe that there is a double-edged Sword of Damocles hanging over the titles. On the one hand, they cannot let an unknown upstart steal their thunder. The Avengers is close enough in release to The Hunger Games that this is a real concern, one that must have the producers of this weekend's releases (Wrath of the Titans and Mirror Mirror) in pure panic mode. There is a largely forgotten Ben Stiller movie called Mystery Men that once got swallowed whole by the Blair Witch phenomenon. The Avengers is far enough away that maybe in can capitalize a bit in that casual movie-goers received positive reinforcement in going to see The Hunger Games this weekend (demonstrated by its solid reviews and A Cinemascore). This may entice them to watch another movie sooner than planned. Alternately, everything may look like a pale shadow of Katniss with The Avengers even having the misfortune to sport someone with a bow/quiver of arrows. I think The Avengers will be fine since the Marvel titles have been so well received but I'm less confident today than I was a week ago.

As for The Dark Knight Rises, I see this title as a foregone conclusion to break the opening weekend box office record now. We have seen that the choicest movie theaters have ramped up their delivery system as demonstrated by the $36,871 per-location average for The Hunger Games. Batman should be the prime beneficiary of this. As stated here umpteen times, I believe that the previous film in a franchise buys the opening weekend of the next release (a terrifying thought when applied to Catching Fire) and no recent blockbuster is as beloved as The Dark Knight. The grave concern for this title is in terms of legs/expectations. Anticipation for The Dark Knight sequel is such that a Batman and Robin (or at least a Batman Returns) reception is a genuine possibility. Fans are a bit unreasonable with their demands for the final Nolan/Batman film. That could hurt it if he has (perish the thought) missed an opportunity with the finale. The rants about Bane's voice made me realize some people will not be happy with anything less than perfect and that's a near impossible standard in cinema. It's exactly what killed the Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean and Matrix sequels.

Reagen Sulewski: The big wild card in this discussion is that Avengers and Spider-Man are 3D, and none of the other films in this discussion are. If we still have the extra cost for 3D tickets, that's going to play a big part in whether they break the record or not. All of these films are capable of breaking the record as it stands, but it's another story to talk about what the record might be by the time it gets to be their opening weekend.

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