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Max Braden: A movie like this makes me think Danny McBride, which makes me think of Your Highness - the kind of spoof comedy that says "screw it, we're not going to take ourselves seriously" but isn't the terrible junk that we've seen from genre spoofs over the last... 20 years? Your Highness only earned $21 million in its entire run during the Spring two years ago. Good legs wouldn't surprise me for this movie. I think they can be plenty satisfied with these numbers.

Reagen Sulewski: Considering this was essentially made for catering money, this is an huge unqualified success. I recently heard an interview with Rogen and Goldberg in which they said that they're essentially done with the whole big money projects, and anything they do on their own is going to be on this scale - which is smart, as there's almost no risk for a studio to back a project in this range. Great ideas like this aren't to come along all the time, so even if this had failed, it wasn't exactly going to black ist them from Hollywood. Getting to the movie itself, I think it was savvy move to go self-deprecating - particularly for their audience, who are immersed in the media culture that they're mocking for the bulk of it.

Tim Briody: This is a great total for something made on the cheap that looks like everyone had a lot of fun making. The celebrity cameos were impressive and the red band trailer is hysterical. It's the summer comedy The Internship and The Hangover III were hoping to be. I expect pretty decent legs over the next month.

Kim Hollis: I think it's a great result. In the film, we see the worst versions of these people, the ones that moviegoers have gotten sick of these last few years - and it works. I think there's a lot to be said for making fun of yourself and letting the audience in on the joke.

Kim Hollis: Before Midnight expanded into 897 locations this weekend, grossing $1.4 million. It has a grand total of $3.1 million at this point. What are your thoughts about the performance, the franchise and the quality of the movie itself (hi Brett!)?

Brett Ballard-Beach: (Hi everybody!) I was hoping this would be a question so I have a long answer, but there should be no spoilers of any kind. I add that as an aside because I managed to keep myself completely in the dark about all the plot details of the film, and did not read any reviews, or articles, or features on the film before seeing it.

First to the geeky stat stuff, quality of the film aside - I was quite shocked that the reason why Portland wouldn't be getting the film within the first three weeks (aside from the fact that we have apparently dropped several rungs on the specialty circuit) was that Sony Classics was going to take this to 50 theaters and then push this wide to counterprogram Man of Steel. Was this confidence on their part that this could play wide? I was intrigued enough to look at the history of Sony Classics pushing films out beyond several hundred theaters and what I saw didn't give me a lot of hope. This was the 10th largest theater count in their 20 year, 320 film release history, but the only two films they have ever pushed beyond $28 million total were Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (which was lightning in a bottle) and Midnight in Paris (which happened to be a charming fantasy/romance/time travel/what if from Woody Allen). All the other times they have started a film limited and then pushed it past 600, the film has died on the vine and lost those theaters within two weeks. And, that appears to be what has happened this time. This is just about what the opening weekend of Before Sunrise made in 1995, playing on only 363 screens. Midnight will probably still play in the same big markets it always has for a couple of months but its grand total won't more than a couple of million ahead of Before Sunset, which was only a few hundred thousand more than Before Sunrise, which means that with nine years of big ticket increases between each installment, the audience willing to pay to see the further adventures of Celine and Jesse in the theaters becomes more devoted yes, but is shrinking exponentially. Success is all relative. The budgets for the last two were sub $3 million, no reason to think this was (that) much more. But it feels like a loss to see SC "fumble" this kind of move as they have in the past and push a worthy film out too far and the result is a per screen average plummeting from above $10,000 three weeks running to barely above $1,500. And as of now, I am gathering that most of those new theaters are dropping it Friday. Portland is taking it down from nine locations to one.

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