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Tim Briody: The six day release window was incredibly goofy and completely exposed The Amazing Spider-Man as, has been stated already on this here site numerous times, unnecessary. Sure, the $140 million estimate is a nice round number that will make for a lot of pretty headlines but it effectively shot its wad by the time the actual weekend arrived. If you give it a normal three day release, you (likely) crack $100 million over the three days, which is pretty much the benchmark for any A-list comic release now. Even if it falls off a cliff after that, you've made the $100 million club, just like two of the other three entries and it doesn't look nearly as bad as this will.

Felix Quinonez: I believe this is a very good result. I don't think this movie should have ever been expected to set the box office on fire. I also think comparing its opening weekend to Spider-Man 3 or even Transformers is a bit unfair. Spider-Man 3 followed two very well reviewed and beloved entries in the series so there was a tremendous amount of demand and excitement for it. Not only that but it was an entirely new adventure and story in the movie franchise. On the other hand, The Amazing Spider Man is following a movie that most people hate so there is an understandable reluctance from audiences. And it's covering a lot of the same ground as Spider Man.

As for the Transformers comparison, I can understand the fact that the calendar configuration brings up some similarities for the movies but there are more factors than that at play. Transformers was the FIRST time the very beloved cartoon series was brought to the big screens in a live action movie. So it was met with incredible excitement and nostalgia by the millions of people that grew up watching the cartoons and playing with the toys. The Amazing Spider Man is trying to revive a movie franchise that can be described as damaged goods. I think this was more about re-establishing the franchise and winning back the audience that was turned off by the disastrous Spider-Man 3. And judging by the result and Cinemascore, I think it's on its way to doing that.

Edwin Davies: This is a pretty okay result, with a few mitigating factors. The increase in ticket prices since the release of Spider-Man 3, coupled with the lower dollar-for-dollar result, show that attendance for the Amazing Spider-Man was significantly lower than any of its predecessors. This speaks to the damage that was done to the franchise by Spider-Man 3 (a film which I don't think is all that bad, though it's markedly worse than the first two) which has perhaps made people gunshy about watching the reboot. It also doesn't help that the reboot comes so soon after the origin story was told the first time around. To compare it to the best reboot so far, Batman Begins, that film retold the origin story 16 years after Batman came out, and did so in a radically different way. Apart from new leads and a new villain, The Amazing Spider-Man never looked all that different from the Raimi Spider-Men.

There's a trade-off with any reboot, though. Studios expect a lower total in exchange for better returns for sequels once trust with the audience has been reestablished. In that respect, a lower total would not be the worse case scenario. The question, then, is whether the film is good enough to bring the audience back, which won't be determined until we see how the film does in the coming weeks, particularly if it gets crushed in two weeks by The Dark Knight Rises, a la, Hellboy II: The Golden Army.

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