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Edwin Davies: To be honest, this is a lot lower than I was expecting given the ubiquity of Meyer's other work. I just assumed that The Host, despite not being as big of a phenomenon as the Twilight books, would have had the name recognition to push it higher. It just seems weird to me that the latest Twilight cash-in film to falter would be something based on a book written by author of Twilight. You would think that pedigree would count for something.

Anyway, if we try not to compare it to Twilight (which is kind of impossible, really) this isn't a total disaster since it wasn't hugely expensive and will probably end up in the black when all is said and done, but it's got to be a disappointment for Open Road Films who were probably hoping that it could be a launch pad for a franchise that could do for them what Twilight did for Summit.

Bruce Hall: I think that the primary appeal of the Twilight franchise was the whole Romeo and Juliet "us against the world" love story, embellished with a specific supernatural subtext that happens to be popular right now. Taking an old story and tapping it into contemporary zeitgeist can be very profitable, as both George Lucas and Stephanie Meyer were smart enough to understand. But when your attempts to embellish the formula exceed your abilities as a writer, things start to break down.

I wouldn't blame this entirely on Andew Niccol - between Gattaca, The Truman Show, Lord of War and The Terminal, many would agree that the man has the ability to do great things. But look at it this way; Niccol seems to have been abducted by aliens right after finishing Lord of War, before resurfacing with the rather mediocre Logan’s Run In Time. His next project is to direct the next film based on the works of Stephenie Meyer - someone who combines the political power of JK Rowling with the writing ability of Tyler Perry. And supposedly, someone who was deeply involved in the production process. I suspect there was little Niccol was in a position to do with this story other than film it and thank God for the opportunity. There's certainly no shortage of blame to go around here, but let's not forget the rather weak source material.

Jason Barney: I'm not sure if this one will even be able to match its $40 million budget. With such an awful opening in the states, I wouldn't expect much viewership overseas. Also, with only $11 million in the bank, a film needs to have serious legs for it to make back its production budget. If the name of the game is profit, this has to be a failure, especially when measured against the writer's other work. The ratings are terrible. I never expected this to be a success, but I never thought Twilight would be the craziness that it was, either. For this film to maintain its screen count it needed to get more support than this. Opening so low in the top 10, in sixth, is not good news for this project moving forward. It won't have legs and it is going to shred screens as the summer season approaches. I seriously doubt this one will be around for long.

Felix Quinonez Jr.: I think it's hard to call this anything other than a failure. I never expected it to put up Twilight numbers but this is way lower than what I thought it would make. From here on out it has to have really great legs just to match its production budget and that's never a good sign.

Kim Hollis: I tend to agree that this should be regarded as a failure and yet I’m not sure I ever saw one single piece of marketing for it. Not a trailer, a television ad, or anything online or via social media. And as someone who works in advertising, I generally have a hyperawareness of these sorts of things. If I hadn’t been measuring it against Stephenie Meyer, I think this would have been a perfectly acceptable and unsurprising debut.

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