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Kim Hollis: Earth to Echo debuted with $8.4 million from Friday-to-Sunday and $13.6 million in five days. What do you think about this E.T. clone's numbers?

Edwin Davies: As was the case with Tammy, this is better than I was expecting Earth to Echo to do if only because my expectations were so low. Live-action family films aren't big business anymore, and the combination of that genre with a found footage aesthetic - which is a style that tends to be associated with horror films - always seemed like an odd fit to me. For a film that looks so weird and misjudged, and one that cost relatively little to make, this seems like a best case scenario.

Jay Barney: This is not a great opening. I don't think expectations were ever too high, but any interest Earth to Echo wanted to develop as a family film against an adult comedy, a horror film, and Transformers really didn't materialize. Perhaps it will, maybe it will become the choice in a slate of movies that is pretty weak over the next few days, but this opening is unremarkable. It opened sixth on over 3,000 screens. Nope. Not a good showing.

Bruce Hall: I'm not sure who I should feel sorry for here. Disney originally produced and shot this movie, before deciding to sell the rights to anyone who wanted a shameless knockoff of E.T. where the alien looks like a radioactive Furbee skeleton. Relativity was so proud to own it that they pushed the release out from January to this past weekend, which doesn't make a lot of sense on the surface. However, as Edwin pointed out, the film's premise was hard to market; it's a red-headed stepchild nobody knew what to do with. Maybe someone just wanted to release it on the down-low and hope for the best. Maybe they'll luck out. With that $13 million opening going against a reported $20 million budget, there's a possibility this could turn out all right for someone.

Reagen Sulewski: I have to admit, this seemed like a decent idea to me when I first saw the basic idea of it as [found footage] + [beloved hit] should be something that works. Of course, it all comes down to execution, and Dave Green, if that is indeed the director's real name, is certainly no Steven Spielberg. I think the writing was on the wall when they decided to just advertise it to the pre-teen audience, which is one of the more limiting demos you can have if you don't get their families. Basically, they took a gamble and lost, and then decided to cut bait.

Kim Hollis: This is a lot better than I imagined this movie would do, primarily because of the reason Reagen mentioned above – they really only marketed it to that extremely limited pre-teen demographic. I frankly have no idea how this made as much money as it did. I don’t think it’s a disastrous result for the studio, but I do imagine they’re going to have to hope for profitability on home video rather than domestic/international release.

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