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Jay Barney: I am definitely disappointed with this result. I have not seen the movie yet, but very likely will. For this nearly $200 million effort to be profitable, a $28 million opening is just awful. I would like the solid to glowing reviews and Cruise's appeal to deliver a good long term performance for Edge of Tomorrow, but I don't think this is going to happen. It is sad that everyone chirps about the ups and downs of a performer's career, but when they do what we ask....just sign onto a quality project...the box office support is not there.

Breaking down the numbers, Edge of Tomorrow is going to have to have some really substantial holds for this to break even. Domestically, I will be curious what the daily numbers are. If it performs anything like Oblivion did last year, it will earn another $10 million over the course of the week....and it will have to pray for a strong second frame. Oblivion lost more than 50% of its audience in weekend #2. If this happens to Edge of Tomorrow, it may not even be at $50 million domestically by then, and it will be out of theaters pretty quickly. If it can have worthy holds leading up to the July 4th weekend the final outlook will be a little less gloomy.

Internationally, there appears to be a lot more support and maybe Edge of Tomorrow can earn some significant cash there. Perhaps this performs very much like After Earth in the long run, where the overseas money was triple the domestic totals, and that didn't end up being the total bomb that everyone predicted when the opening wasn't as large as hoped. $82 million from abroad is nothing to sneeze at. If you break the numbers down even further, After Earth only earned $34 million from China during its run, Edge of Tomorrow grabbed $25 million from China in its first week. So maybe there is hope this will at least break even, but when the money hasn't been made yet, and studios have to wait and see, that is not a good sign.

Max Braden: That's a lousy, lousy number and even lower than the lousy number I was expecting. In the trailer for Edge of Tomorrow all I could see were the weaker elements of Elysium and Looper, and maybe Battle for Los Angeles. There just wasn't much in the trailer to tell me what it was about or why I should go see it. That said, I'm okay with Cruise trying out these roles; I really liked Oblivion (though really more for the cinematography than the acting). But these movies seem to just demonstrate that there's a narrow casting field where Cruise will thrive - Mission Impossible.

David Mumpower: Look, there is no sugarcoating this result. Edge of Tomorrow is a wonderful movie (I am fairly confident it will finish in my top 10 for 2014) that cost a fortune to make. Its domestic take is unlikely to represent half of its budget, not even factoring in the added expenses involved in negative cost. For a studio, domestic box office remains the extremely weighted priority so the disappointing opening weekend is indicative of a project that will struggle to recoup its financial investment during its theatrical run.

Jay and Felix are both correct in that Tom Cruise remains one of the most viable international stars in our industry. Even if Edge of Tomorrow triples its expected North America total of $80 million, we are still talking about a $320 million global gross for a $185 million production. That is simply not good enough when the split heavily favors the international side. What I believe transpired here is that the release of Oblivion, a lackluster film, negatively impacted the debut of Edge of Tomorrow. Had the movies been released in the opposite order, Edge of Tomorrow would have received more benefit of the doubt while Oblivion’s opening weekend box office would have been aided by the impeccable quality of its predecessor.

Any time someone releases two films consecutively in a similar genre, the first one better be great. Cruise himself accomplished with this with A Few Good Men and The Firm, but Oblivion was not a good movie. Since it was released only a year ago, that memory lingers in the minds of consumers. It’s truly unfortunate because Edge of Tomorrow is one of the best science fiction movies ever made.

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