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David Mumpower: Judging from the replies thus far, my primary question is: "Do you people know any women?" I had been saying for a while now that this would play out as a de facto sequel to Sex and the City, another opportunity for ladies night. Given the rambunctious responses to the beefcake trailer (and the very funny "lawbreakers" joke in it), Magic Mike if anything fell short of my expectations. I read the studio estimates on Friday that projected an opening weekend in the lower $20 million range. Then, I checked all of the local showings here to verify that I was not misreading the massive amount of sellouts. A lot of theaters passed on Magic Mike because they didn't know what to do with it. This proved regrettable as there was money left on the table on Friday evening because of all the sellouts. As predicted, the movie was front-loaded to the nth degree and that is all that kept this weekend from being a multiple $40 million openers frame. That would have been the second one in four weeks. Instead, we are left "settling" for four movies earning north of $25 million. It finally feels like summer now.

Max Braden: Under normal circumstances, a male stripper movie should open to less than half of what Magic Mike did (or less than a tenth, and then go on to get nominated for an Oscar). I don't think you could have predicted this opening figure when the movie was filming. But something happened in the last two weeks that just made women feverish about going to see it, and suddenly you did have a Sex and the City phenomenon happening. On the evening of release, I was thinking it might do over $40 million, so maybe the fever fizzled a little at the last moment. Still, I think you can look at Magic Mike and say "wow, that's big."

Kim Hollis: Every woman I worked with seemed to be very excited to see Magic Mike, so about two weeks ago, I was realizing how well it had the potential to do. Like David, I am even slightly disappointed it didn't do a bit better. Ultimately, though, it behaved like Sex and the City in every way, just without a built-in fanbase to bolster numbers. Its very low weekend multiplier showed that it was definitely Ladies' Night on Friday and then they went and did typical stuff on the weekend instead. I don't think we'll see much in the way of legs for the film, but it really doesn't need them.

The title wasn't supposed to be ironic, was it?

Kim Hollis: Believe it or not, there was a fourth film this weekend, entitled People Like Us. It opened to a pathetic $4.3 million. What went wrong here?

Jason Barney: I'm not sure. As discussed earlier, there was a lot of competition at the box office and there had to be losing films at some point in time. Perhaps it didn't do well based on story and ads, or people were just not that interested in it. If there was a weekend where this movie could have broken out, this could have been it. Going up against talking Teddy Bears and male strippers on the weekend prior to July 4th would seem to be an okay proposition, but it did not work out.

I guess I am surprised by how poorly this one did. Chris Pine's star is on the rise. His work in Star Trek scored him a lot of points, and while it didn't do great in theaters, This Means War has a group of fans who did like it. He is still building his resume. The opening is really weak, and should have been at least a little better.

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