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We had a weird feeling this one was going to do well.

Kim Hollis: The biggest new opener of the weekend is Premonition, which finishes in third place with $18 million. What's the cause for this success?

David Mumpower: People realize the guy playing her husband is Doom from Fantastic Four, and they want to see him repeatedly die.

Reagen Sulewski: I'm a bit surprised at this one. Sandra Bullock has been mired in the mid-teens for some time, and the ads didn't look that compelling. Maybe The Lake House primed the pump for her fans to see her in more temporal weirdness.

David Mumpower: All joking aside, I was surprised that the marketing made it seem so similar to her last movie, considering that it was a mediocre performer ($52 million domestically). I guess that consumers saw a differentiation I missed.

Tim Briody: I was stunned when I found out that this would be her biggest opening weekend ever.

David Mumpower: Tim, I fact-checked you on that because I was so certain that couldn't be right. It blows my mind that she's never had a bigger opening than $18.0 million.

Kim Hollis: Like David mentioned in the wrap, it had that kind of Ashley Judd thing going for it. Rather than being romantic like Lake House, it was more a thriller. I guess other women like that sort of thing.

Reagen Sulewski: I very nearly called it the reverse Double Jeopardy in my Weekend Forecast. I should have gone with that instinct.

Tim Briody: I triple-checked and I still couldn't believe it!

David Mumpower: Note: Miss Congeniality 2 opened bigger than Miss Congeniality and Speed 2 opened bigger than Speed...there's a trivia question that would trip up anybody in North America.

You know what would be scary? A Lamb Chop movie.

Kim Hollis: Dead Silence made $7.8 million this weekend. Is this just the number we should expect from disposable horror films or should Universal be pleased with the result?

Reagen Sulewski: For a movie with as silly a premise as this one, they should be thankful for every dollar they get.

Tim Briody: So apparently the Saw guys had only one good idea in them.





David Mumpower: Reagen's right. Something is fundamentally wrong with the process if any given horror film is good for roughly this sort of performance. Cineplexes should have a theater area designated "Generic Horror Movie" to save movie on the specifics. The who and why doesn't seem to matter any. Consumers think, "People die! Woohoo!" It's that simple.

Kim Hollis: I think they were kind of hoping that people remembered Magic and its super-scariness. Problem is, their primary audience is waaaaaay too young for that. They were indeed lucky to get people to throw away money on this one.

David Mumpower: My idea for a horror film is for a mass murderer to methodically slay all of the low budget horror movie makers in Hollywood. You could do a dozen sequels and never run out of fresh bodies.

Tim Briody: David, Lionsgate is on line two and they'd like to offer you several wheelbarrows full of money.

Kim Hollis: There's something about the psychology of the teenage mind that really likes scary, gory movies. I know I was that way at that age. I can barely stand them now (though I still like the ones I enjoyed at the time).

Reagen Sulewski: it's not even the gore that's the problem. It's the total lack of discrimination.

David Mumpower: April Fool's Day is the only horror movie that stands out for me from when I was a teenager, and that was solely because it had a twist.

Kim Hollis: Nightmare on Elm Street, Evil Dead, Halloween and The Shining all stand out as movies I'd watch over and over again as a teen (granted, we're talking about some pretty big names of cinema in charge of each one, but still).

Chris Rock's confusion leads to movie-goer apathy

Kim Hollis: Chris Rock's film, I Think I Love My Wife, managed only $5.7 million. Why doesn't everybody love Chris?

Reagen Sulewski: That's a bit of a gut shot for Rock. But then, the next ad I see for it will be the first.

Tim Briody: I appreciate what he was trying, but unfortunately, it just didn't look very funny.

David Mumpower: I agree with both of you. It wasn't advertised much and the spots were all over the place. Was it to be a statement on the fun of potentially cheating or a celebration of monogamy? They seemed to think Rock would overcome the lack of focus, but reviews emphatically state that he couldn't.

Kim Hollis: I love Rock (and Gina Torres and Kerry Washington), but this movie never looked like anything we couldn't get in one of his comedy routines.

Reagen Sulewski: I think he's in a bit of a transition period career wise, trying to figure out where goes next. I think he covets Steve Martin's career, frankly.

Reagen Sulewski: Yeah, Kim, some of this looked ripped from his standup.

Kim Hollis: Or perhaps it was the presence of Stephen A. Smith in the film that kept people away.

David Mumpower: His agent should have stolen him Martin Lawrence's spot in Tim Allen's biker gang.

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