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Bruce Hall: Well, if you're going to release a cloying race-relations movie with an uninspiring title, this is the time of year to do it. So, kudos to Relativity for following the playbook.

Still, as with Project Almanac, it's a risk-reward situation that looks poised to offer mostly the latter. It'll probably end up making a modest profit, which is no doubt what was expected of it from the beginning.

And as for Costner, he has a string of quietly profitable movies to his credit over the last few years, and also got to be Superman's dad. He's had a long and distinguished career, and it looks like he's going to get the soft landing into basic cable that he's so rightfully earned.

Edwin Davies: While this is probably not the ideal scenario Costner was hoping for since the film seemed to be geared towards some sort of awards contender type significance, and because he funded it with his own money so he'd probably like to see a decent return on it, this is fine for what it is. Black and White was pretty much dumped on a weekend where the bar for success is already pretty low and it just about cleared it. No one will remember it past this weekend, but like Project Almanac, it isn't the disaster (financially, at least; it still sounds like a terrible, misguided movie) that it has been painted as elsewhere.

Michael Lynderey: The film originally had a platform release date in December, for awards consideration, and so I'm surprised they went with an outright wide release in late January, without the benefit of a slow expansion. In that regard, it's an almost identical strategy to last year's fellow Oscars leftover, Labor Day, which also had a brief December bow and then went straight into wide release the month after. Compared to Labor Day - a comparison I must make - and keeping in mind that both films weren't very well reviewed, I think the Black or White numbers are actually strong. The movie could and probably will even have legs enough to make, say, $20 million, which given the budget and the above credentials, is stupendous. Kevin Costner has filled the screen with these modestly-budgeted films during the past year or so, and they've mostly done pretty well, under their circumstances. Perhaps he's developed a Statham-like niche?

Kim Hollis: I mean, this is a film that is just there. I'm sure Kevin Costner had much higher ambitions for this project when he financed it. Although it's not hurting anyone financially, it doesn't really have a reason to exist.

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