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Max Braden: Putting aside the movie's opening figures relation to its budget, I think this is a great result for the movie that was advertised. Gravity had a plot that was easy to understand: space accident plus and how the character is going to survive it. Armageddon was similarly simple: go into space to blow up the asteroid before it destroys Earth. Interstellar was obviously much more ambitious: post- or near-apocalyptic situation on Earth plus other galaxies and environments plus robots plus (potential) time travel. That's a jumble of issues that makes it much more of an egghead's type of movie. When I saw the trailer it made me think of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which, while featuring fantastic cinematography, always seems like "work" in order to take it all in. An ambitious movie is bound to turn away some audiences who don't want to have to work to appreciate it, and this could have resulted in an opening down in the 30s or less. From that standpoint I think $50 million is a win. From the budget standpoint, it may be a wash. I'm curious about how the foreign market accepts it. Nolan may just have to accept praise for the creative achievement rather than financial profit.

Kim Hollis: While I think this debut is about as much as you can hope for from an inscrutable science fiction film that is nearly three hours long, I'm not really bullish about its long-term prospects. I worry that the incredibly divisive word-of-mouth may keep a lot of people at home who would otherwise be certain to see this film in the theater. While I think that people may still argue that it's worth seeing on the big screen for the special effects, some people may still take a wait-and-see approach because it's a real investment to sit through a movie this long when it may not be something you'll appreciate. I don't really worry about other competition, but I do think that Interstellar may have a bit of a tough road ahead - at least domestically.

David Mumpower: One of the worst mistakes we ever made in MMQB occurred when we created a topic entitled, "What will be the legacy of Avatar?" We posted that after its second weekend in theaters, when its running box office total was $212.7 million. It was Christmas week, and we didn't have a lot to discuss, so we jumped the gun in pre-judging a film that had yet to earn approximately $450 million of its revenue. I take full responsibility for that error, as the topic suggestion was my own. I bring it up now for a simple reason.

Christopher Nolan's last three movies had an average run time of approximately 160 minutes. Those three titles earned $1.274 billion domestically including a collective opening weekend gross $382.1 million. Effectively, Nolan's three super-long films earned only 30% of their final domestic take on opening weekend. Those numbers would suggest a final North American result of $158.3 million (i.e. an opening weekend for The Dark Knight) for Interstellar, which I think is low. Judging what happens next based upon what we have seen is a dicey proposition for such a long film.

What I have seen from Interstellar, a new intellectual property whose subject matter is too complex for many, is acceptable bordering on good. It's the time from now until January 2nd that will ultimately determine the film's reputation, though.

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