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Kim Hollis: America, Dinesh D'Souza's "documentary" follow-up to 2016: Obama's America, earned $2.7 million during the weekend proper and $4.1 million since Wednesday. Why didn't this catch on like his first film?

Edwin Davies: I think the problem lies with the film itself and the climate into which it was released. The subject matter of the film - what would the world be like if America never existed, man? It'd be pretty trippy, right? - isn't terribly compelling and, based on the reviews, it was handled pretty abominably. Not that 2016: Obama's America was a great work of cinema, but at least it was clear about what it was: A hatchet job on a sitting President hoping to influence an election. While America is also a hatchet job, this time broadly aimed at implying that Hilary Clinton is under the influence of the devil, it can't put that in the ads or the title. It's also not being released in the middle of a contentious and divisive election season, so there isn't a keen wellspring of feeling to exploit. Personally, I can't wait for D'Souza's next film, in which he imagines what the world would be like if he had never made America. (Spoilers: it's exactly the same, except a couple of thousand angry old people went to watch Jersey Boys this weekend instead.

Bruce Hall: Because its target demographic was too busy blowing their fingers off with M-80s all weekend had better things to do than get suckered again. If you believe that people tend to get the films they deserve, then also believe that there are limits to the degree you can manipulate even the most willing audience. At some point you need to actually be good at what you do, and Dinesh D'Souza really isn't. Sometimes, we catch lightning in a bottle and create something that resonates with a certain audience, at a certain moment in history. But to repeat that, there needs to be depth and quality behind what you do, on some aggregate level. Otherwise, your movie becomes the Blair Witch Project of the genre.

True Believers stayed away from this in pathogenic droves. That kind of betrayal should tell you something.

Reagen Sulewski: His first film also had the benefit of being released at a time when people were paying attention to politics, whereas even with midterms coming up, his core audience just isn't motivated. There's also the matter of D'Souza's peculiar fall from grace within the right-wing outrage society (to which I'm referring more to his family problems than his criminal ones) - this is a guy that's been outright shown to be a hypocrite. I'd like to think that his audience is haling the wise words of a man from Texas in that "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, that's, that's, well, you won't get fooled again."

David Mumpower: In addition to the other points, I believe that a lot of the people who gave D’Souza’s previous movie a chance felt burnt by their decision. Its current score on IMDB is 5.1. Now, I am under no delusions about the legitimacy of every review posted there regarding the film. I am one of the people who watched Obama’s America, however, and I think that if anything, its atrocious IMDb score is too high. The prior documentary caught lightning in a bottle by tapping into the zeitgeist during a contentious election campaign season.

The lack of passion toward mid-terms that others have mentioned is a lot of the story, but what I said about Tammy yesterday applies here as well. If the last movie was lousy, fence sitters will not give the next project a chance. If anything, our point of view is skewed on this topic anyway because $2.7 million is a solid result for a documentary, at least if we do not evaluate the terrible per-location average of $2,403 and only consider the actual weekend take. Documentaries almost never open north of $1 million. Yes, exhibitors were mistaken in providing this many theaters to such an unwanted project but $2.7 million for a documentary is still solid in a vacuum.

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