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Michael Lynderey: I thought the seething reviews and the film's oft-discussed controversial humor might really hurt it, but in the end, it looks like a lot of people actually turned out just to see what the fuss is all about. This is how I've worked out the math: had Get Hard been a well reviewed film, it probably would have easily opened north of $40 million. Once critics had their way with it, the opening dropped to maybe early $20 millions. But those curious to see just what the critics were ranting about raised the number back up an extra $10 million. Having said that, this formula doesn't hold very good legs in the cards. I'd expect a pretty big drop-off next week, especially up against the rather appealing film opening on April 3rd.

Kim Hollis: It Follows, the well-reviewed horror flick from the Weinsteins' Radius arm, earned $3.8 million this weekend as it expanded to more than 1,200 venues. What do you think about this?

Jason Barney: We can add this one to the made cheaply but very profitable section of our video libraries. The budget for It Follows was a slim $2 million and everything is profit from here on out. The rollout has been great, the buzz is magnificent, and one wonders if this one still has room to grow. The 95% RT score is amazing for a film in the horror genre. This one could hang around for a while.

Brett Ballard-Beach: I begrudgingly give the Weinsteins credit for pushing this out wide to float on near unanimous critical acclaim and word-of-mouth. With only one new film opening each of the next two weeks, this has the potential to hang on in the top 10 for a little longer than it might normally have. And a Top Five debut, even with only $4 million, will still get it mentioned on the evening news.

Edwin Davies: I've been semi-seriously referring to this as the anti-Snowpiercer this week. Both were critically lauded, much buzzed about films distributed by Radius-TWC, but where Snowpiercer did pretty well in its opening weekend and then had an almost immediate release on VOD, It Follows was put out to more theaters and had its VOD release pushed back to allow for a longer theatrical run. Obviously they're different genres and It Follows is a much easier (i.e. less weird) sell than Snowpiercer, but it's interesting seeing films which have a decent amount in common being treated so differently and getting much different results.

Given the low budget, it Follows would have been a decent success if it hadn't earned a single penny more after Friday, when it passed the $2 million mark. As it stands, it's making a lot of headlines for opening so strongly on relatively few screens (and for becoming Radius' biggest film ever), which gives it room to expand. I'm not sure how likely it is to find a broad audience outside of the horror crowd since critical acclaim doesn't always translate to mass appeal, but even a $10 million finish would make it wildly successful and give it a long afterlife on home video. This is obviously the smallest-scale of the three stories from this weekend, but it's probably the most unequivocal success of the lot.

Matthew Huntley: Even though I wasn't a fan of this movie (although, after reading other reviews, I now understand its appeal), the movie's run is impressive thus far and I'm honestly happy for it because of the breadth it lends to the overall marketplace. I envision word-of-mouth carrying it as far as $15 million in theaters, plus more from ancillary sales. I expect we'll see more from the director, David Robert Mitchell, in the near future.

Ryan Kyle: On track to become Radius-TWC's highest-grossing film within the next few days, It Follows is a win for the new off-shoot. Only given a major theatrical push two weeks ago instead of an immediate VOD release, this means that the $4 million is truly from all word-of-mouth. No TV spots. No trailer placements in the major theaters. No billboards. Just word-of-mouth and social media.

I'm a bit surprised that Radius didn't platform it slower (jumping from four to 32 to 1,218 theaters with even more on the way next week) a la the first Paranormal Activity. It'd be unreasonable to see this reach the heights of that film, but assuming Furious 7 doesn't suck out all of the air, It Follows could silently make it's way past $20 million. The major studio release "Unfriended" is still 3 weeks away (and is still a question mark in terms of delivering a good opening weekend), so Radius has quiet some time to capitalize on the momentum without competition. Call it the opposite of Home and Get Hard, with reviews over star power being the selling point for this one. Radius just needs to sell the film beyond the horror fanboy crowd to make this a real hit.

Michael Lynderey: Shades of The Raid and The Raid 2? The formula: an indie genre film with great reviews and no name actors plays at a few festivals, opens on select screens in March, and then, because of the great per-screen numbers, expands wide to little further attention. It seems a good way to create a cult film, and just like those Raid movies, It Waits will probably eventually develop a big cult (oxymoron) fanbase. Everyone will watch it for Halloween. Not bad.

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