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I want to get an orange cat and name it Richard Parker.

Kim Hollis: Life of Pi, the adaptation of the Yann Martel novel, earned $30.5 million over the five-day Thanksgiving holiday weekend. What do you think of this result?

Jason Barney: I'm pretty surprised, as this was not a film I would have considered going to see prior to this opening, but now I am intrigued. Tracking was way off for this one. It is rare a film doubles the predicted opening, but Life of Pi managed to do just that. I will be curious to see if the holds during the week days are strong. If we reach the the mid point in the week and the numbers continue to sizzle, the buzz for this project could give it a great second weekend. Nothing will repeat what Avatar did, but the 3D aspect of the film appears to be part of the draw.

Matthew Huntley: Piggybacking on Jay's comment, I too have heard the 3D is a draw for Life of Pi, but it's really the story and overall experience that should be the film's primary attractions. I saw it in 2D and it was amazing. It's hard to recall a film that gave such a fresh perspective on the power of the movies and life in general. If the movie had as much hype as other studio tent poles this season (Skyfall, Twilight), I'd say a $30 million opening is disappointing, but since a lot of people, like Jay attested to, weren't sure what to make of it, I'm apt to call it solid. It's going to need a lot of legs to cover its $120 million budget, but I think word-of-mouth will help it get there. And I think Pi's appeal overseas could be significant. I hope this turns into "the little movie (with a big budget) that could," because it deserves to do well in my opinion.

Bruce Hall: I think this is vindication for a film initially perceived as everything from "bloated vanity project" to "misguided boondoggle" and everything not nice in between. In reality it turns out that Life of Pi is a pretty remarkable film, and has been getting excellent word-of-mouth - even from people who didn't care for it. I'm tempted to compare this result to what we saw happen with Cloud Atlas - another artistically polarizing film that was also based on an acclaimed novel. The difference is, Life of Pi seems to have resonated somewhat more with mainstream audiences, if not entirely so. After five days of release, it's managed to earn significantly more than Cloud Atlas has after nearly a month. That isn't meant to be a scientific comparison, rather my point is that two films with similar strengths and weaknesses have provided us with some interesting parallel analysis, and it would seem that many find Life of Pi to be a stronger experience.

That's not to say that it doesn't face a significant uphill climb to make back its rather ample budget. But the film seems to have succeeded so well on an artistic level that regardless of how you personally feel about it, you're going to see it on a lot of top ten lists come the end of the year.

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