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This movie title angers me because it makes me think of annoying Penny from Happy Endings.

Kim Hollis: The Amazing Spider-Man opened to $62 million from Friday-to-Sunday and $137 million in six plus days of release. What is your take on this result?

David Mumpower: The key factor at play is that a Tuesday release with this calendar configuration has already earned half of its final domestic take, give or take a bit. The Amazing Spider-Man is probably going to end up in the $260-$280 million range, which will make it the worst performer in the franchise thus far and by quite a bit. The caveat here is that the international marketplace has evolved in a manner that will allow the 2012 release to claim a much higher overall box office run. The reason for this involves the way that all three Spider-Man movies by Sam Raimi earned almost dollar for dollar in North America as they did abroad. The split was 46/54. On The Amazing Spider-Man, as much as 70% of its revenue will be accrued abroad, which is less lucrative for Sony.

The problem with this movie is that it's utterly unnecessary. Creating an origin story for a movie that was released in 2002 is so silly that to a certain extent, this proves the overriding popularity of Spider-Man as a movie character. At least some people were willing to watch the same story again. It would be the same as re-telling Shrek or Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl with new characters and some storytelling modifications. The converse is that The Amazing Spider-Man benefits from five years of *massive* ticket price inflation yet still earned less in six days than Spider-Man 3 managed in a single non-holiday weekend. In other words, ticket sales are waaaaaaaaay down from 2007. As such, I have to call this performance a disappointment.

Matthew Huntley: I think David is more or less spot-on with his assessment, but I would say Sony is probably content with this result since it's higher than their own projections, and given the bad taste Spider-Man 3 left with a lot of moviegoers, The Amazing Spider-Man's performance proves there's still a high demand for the popular superhero, even if it is less than before.

I'm not sure what the road ahead looks like. Given the movie's positive reviews and audience polls, it should have decent legs, but there's no telling what will happen when the The Dark Knight Rises rolls out. With almost $140 million in the bank so far, though, I think Sony can claim their new Spidey is a success. Next weekend will be determining factor of just how big a success.

Reagen Sulewski: When Spider-Man came out in 2002, it was the first of the new breed that showed what excellently done comic book movies could look like, the proof of concept. Now, it's just another comic book film and not a particularly good one at that, so yeah, it does come down to the character. It's interesting that David mentions Shrek above, since it's sort of another one of those happy accidents (or not so happy, depending on how you view the franchise). If Shrek had been the fourth or fifth or sixth computer animated movie to come along instead of being the first non-Pixar, it's a footnote. It's the same with the 2002 Spider-Man.

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