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Kim Hollis: We're officially halfway through 2015 - it's never too early to start your Christmas shopping, people - and we're wondering what your thoughts are on the box office to date. Which films do you consider to be the most surprising successes, failures and small-scale success stories?


Jason Barney: Hands down the big surprise for me is Jurassic World. This film was supposed to be a summer option, but it is re-writing the record books. A film that was supposed to open around $100 million or more is starting to garner Avengers, Avatar, Dark Knight, and Titanic discussions.

Additionally, I am not too concerned about perceived weakness at the box office, especially at the end of May and the beginning of June. For the year the numbers are pretty sold. Jurassic World is setting records - and we just had two films in their second or third weekends make MORE than $50 million dollars. How often has that happened? The box office numbers are fine and I expect a solid 4th of July weekend. Not sizzling, but good enough.

Edwin Davies: American Sniper just pips Jurassic World as the biggest surprise of the year, for me. I expected Jurassic World would probably make $200-300 million because it's a big sequel to a long-running franchise, so while its performance to date has been stunning, it's only doubled what I expected. American Sniper, though, ended up earning five or six times what I would have expected, and it did so without any of the benefits that Jurassic World had.

In terms of failures, I think that Mortdecai probably takes that medal. I didn't expect it to be a breakout success, but for it close with less than $8 million, despite omnipresent marketing and some big names, is a stunning failure. If nothing else, it serves as a final indication that Johnny Depp has got to do something to win audiences back.

My favorite small-scale successes of the year would probably be Ex Machina and It Follows, both of which performed modestly, but managed to turn great reviews and smart release strategies into solid results.

Felix Quinonez: Jurassic World is by far the most surprising success of the year. I had almost zero excitement for this movie because I really only liked the first movie in the series. Because of this, I completely underestimated it. I really didn't expect it to crack $100 million in its first opening weekend and didn't really think it would finish much higher than Jurassic Park 3. But obviously I was completely wrong about it. And even though I still don't want to see the movie, I've been watching its performance very closely and I'm very curious to see how high it goes.

As for as the state of the box office, I never really worry about it. I feel like the idea that the box office is in trouble keeps popping up and it always seems to rebound. It's a repeating cycle.

As far as failures go, I have to say that Tomorrowland was a big surprise for me. I was really hoping this would become a huge hit and I thought it had the potential to at least reach $200 million domestically. But it won't even reach $100 million. No matter how you look at it, it's a disappointing performance. But when you consider its huge budget, it goes into flop territory.

Michael Lynderey: It's definitely been a year defined by huge, mega, monstrous, gargantuan, behemoth-shaped and -sized blockbusters that came out of nowhere. No one could have possibly predicted the numbers on American Sniper and Jurassic World under any circumstances. Furious 7 was more of a given, but it certainly didn't disappoint. And what was up with SpongeBob 2? $160 million? Really? Who on earth saw that coming? Cinderella was also a little bigger than I would have thought (it just cracked $200 million).

On other fronts, non-dinosaur-related horror films have been doing just OK, sequelitis did set in on some follow-ups to 2012 films (Avengers, Ted, Taken 2, and my favorite, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel), and Johnny Depp needs to recover from what is possibly the worst film of his career, Mortdecai (Black Mass could do the trick). Also, Paul Blart 2 somehow didn't make 1 billion domestic.

By the way, Jurassic World has a very good chance of being the highest grossing film of the entire decade (domestically, if you must). It only has to beat The Avengers at $623 million (as well as any potential challengers in the next five years, like Batman Vs. Superman and My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2). I think that possibility is another thing no one could have predicted - and if they had, they would have probably guessed that this would-be record-breaking Jurassic Park movie would be some kind of critically-beloved, revolutionary, genre-defining masterpiece - like what The Dark Knight was called - as opposed to what Jurassic World is - simply an effective B-movie along the same lines as any other Jurassic Park film.

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