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Kim Hollis: Christopher Nolan's Interstellar debuted with $47.5 million for the weekend and has just over $52 million since its Wednesday IMAX start. What do you think of this result?

Jason Barney: My reaction to the opening of Interstellar is quite positive. Generally with a big project like this one, the objective is to have an opening weekend as high as possible, but I am not sure that was the overall strategy here. Much like the way Gravity grabbed audiences last fall, I suspect Paramount is looking for this film to be pretty leggy over the next couple of weeks. The opening is solid enough. Pushing the $50 million level against a budget of $165 is a bit problematic, but I do expect a Christopher Nolan product to have substantial support as Thanksgiving gets closer. The length of the film may push some people away, but it is receiving positive reviews. The buzz going in was substantial and if it holds well between now and the end of November, a lot of money will be made during Thanksgiving. That weekend has become one of the movie event weekends of the year. A film such as Interstellar should play well between now and then.

For Paramount, this appears to be a bit of vindication in their decision to push fewer films but to carefully select the movies they do put on their schedule. This is their eighth wide release of the year, and none of them appear to have lost money. Their success doesn’t really compare to Universal’s of late, but Paramount isn’t exactly hurting at this point. Labor Day was a smaller film. Paranormal Activity: Marked Ones made a mountain of money, Jack Ryan, Noah, and Hercules were either punts or brought in at least a little money after foreign receipts were tallied up. Two of their most recent releases, Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, have been money-making machines. Interstellar should continue a nice run of success for the studio.

Matthew Huntley: I was hoping Interstellar would make a lot more money over the weekend because, personally, I think it's one of the best films of year so far, and I guess I want others to experience and support it. A near $50 million opening is by no means "bad," but as Jason mentioned, it might not be enough given its gargantuan budget, and with Dumb and Dumber To and Catching Fire about to steal part of its audience in the coming weeks, I'm not so sure it will last long enough to be labeled a bona fide hit. In my opinion, Paramount would have been better off releasing it the week before Halloween, just to give it a little more breathing room leading up to this month's intense competition, but what's done is done, and hopefully its word-of-mouth and international numbers will allow it to earn back its costs.

Felix Quinonez: I can't help but feel a bit torn about this result. The logical side of me can see that this is a very good opening. It is an original, heady, science fiction film that is almost three hours long, and it still managed to get close to $50 million on its opening weekend. It still has a couple of weeks without any real competition and hopefully it can get a boost during the Thanksgiving weekend and ride out the holidays. I think it has a solid shot of matching its budget and a hopefully it can even crack $200 million stateside.

On the other hand, the Nolan fanboy in me got his hopes up a bit too much. I was seriously hoping it could get close to $80 million and ultimately reach $300 million domestically. I know that sounds crazy but I've been dying to see this movie and the commercials look brilliant. I guess I (wrongly) assumed that everyone was as excited as me about Interstellar.

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