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Kim Hollis: Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas earned $16 million, the lowest total so far for any film with "Madea" in the title. What do you think happened here? Do you think it will actually hold up over the Christmas holidays?

Edwin Davies: There seem to be two possible explanations here; either A Madea Christmas had a depressed opening because of its proximity to the holiday season and will rebound over the coming weeks, or most of Perry's audience decided to pass on this one. It seems we'll have to wait to see how well the film performs next week to get any confirmation, but I'll stick my neck out and say that it's the latter, if only because this is such a sizable drop from the usual Madea opening of $25 million plus. I think it'll hold up fairly well over the next couple of weeks (in comparison to most Perry films, which tend to be one weekend wonders) because it's so obviously seasonal. However, since it's starting from a lower point, it'll probably wind up being the first Madea film to earn less than $50 million, which suggests to me that the concept wasn't strong enough this time around, and the performance of each Madea film seems largely dependent on whatever the central hook is.

Bruce Hall: Forgive me if I've mentioned this before, but is it possible that even Tyler Perry's famously gullible devoted fan base might someday get tired of watching the same movie over and over again? Of course as I've also mentioned before, Tyler Perry's films do have a built in audience, and tend to sport the kind of modest production budgets that make them almost automatically profitable (although at $25 million, this one is firmly on the expensive side).

I'm also privy to unconfirmed reports that his screenplays are all improvised during the 20 minute organic cucumber toner treatments he and Oprah enjoy after an afternoon of using their servants as life size chess pieces. The damn movies practically come off an assembly line.

And let's not forget that unlike Tyler Perry's other Tyler Perry films, this Tyler Perry film is specifically holiday themed. So despite the uncharacteristically soft opening, A Madea Christmas might well hang around longer than a traditional Tyler Perry's Tyler Perry film otherwise would. I therefore predict that Tyler Perry Presents Tyler Perry's Production of Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas will have legs - and will eventually turn enough of a profit to allow Tyler Perry to make this exact same Tyler Perry movie again someday.

It's all about the Benjamins - and as long as Tyler Perry's movies bring them in (and I reluctantly insist this one eventually will), he and Lionsgate will continue their very profitable, Very Tyler Perry relationship for many years to come.

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