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Edwin Davies: The Call was just interesting enough to stand out on a weekend when there wasn't much else going. It had a premise which was easy to grasp (It's Die Hard...in a Call Center!), predominantly featured women in the major roles, which works on both a counter-programming level and, somewhat unfortunately, makes it an exception in American action cinema, and the trailers were pretty effective at getting those key points across. Plus, there has been a dearth of decent action films/thrillers this year, and there was clearly enough here to make people think it was worth taking a chance on. I'm surprised by just how many, however.

Kim Hollis: I thought this would tank, and I'm kind of blown away by the fact that people would choose this generic-looking thriller over any other generic whatever we've seen throughout 2013. I barely saw any marketing (again, it was mostly limited to WWE promo stuff) and what I did see of the movie just looked blah. It sort of reminds me of Double Jeopardy back in 1999.

David Mumpower: I had mentioned in the forecast that the movie forcibly reminded me of Cellular, a 2004 movie starring Chris Evans. I always think of that movie as a bomb because it was. It cost $45 million to produce while earning only $32 million domestically. A key note about that performance is that it debuted to $10.1 million, which is the modern equivalent of $13 million. In other words, the movie opened well for a low budget film but failed relative to its inexplicably large financial outlay. The Call may be thematically similar (on the surface level, I would maintain identical) to Cellular, but the pertinent difference is that its budget of $13 million makes it a safer play. Making the same movie premise for 30% of the cost is an impressive feat. I still do not understand what about this project distinguished it enough to reach this sort of opening weekend box office, though. The ads I have seen are shamelessly generic. I guess we have reached a point where consumers are so desperate for a new movie that anything will do...unless it's a magic-based comedy.

Kim Hollis: The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, a comedy featuring dueling magicians and starring Steve Carell and Jim Carrey, earned only $10.2 million at the box office this weekend. Why did this one bomb?

Brett Ballard-Beach: Based on some of the predictions for this, I may have been alone in thinking it was not going to break out of the single millions for its opening. The fact that it opened at a single screen art house theater (as well as all the multiplexes of course) here in Portland had me thinking for the longest time that they were going to end up trimming the theater count, and acknowledge that this was a cult film in the making and not much else. I know I may enjoy this in practice somewhere down the line, but in theory this looked like a single joke film where the joke weren't funny. I truly did not grasp who the wide mainstream audience for this was. A $30 million budget is hard not to make back for a 3,000 plus screen opening, but Burt Wonderstone might just pull off that unenviable trick.

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