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Kids just don't respect virgins these days

Kim Hollis: The Jonas Brothers: The 3-D Concert Experience earned only $12.5 million this weekend, less than Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour earned on its first Saturday alone. Do we officially have our first box office bomb of 2009?

Les Winan: Nick Jonas just found out what happens when you dump Miley Cyrus.

Joel Corcoran: No matter how you look at it, I think it does count as the first bomb of 2009. The Jonas Brothers should've completely dominated the box office given their immense fan base, and they barely squeaked by Slumdog Millionaire in its 16th weekend. Maybe they should just stick to making music. Or perhaps they should consider a television or web-based show, a la The Monkees.

Tim Briody: Well, Joel, they do have a Disney series coming up that is essentially the same plot as Hannah Montana so they've got that going for them. I wouldn't call the movie performance an outright bomb, but it's certainly one of the biggest disappointments of the year, hands down. Perhaps they should have gone the same route as the Hannah Montana movie did and claim it's for one weekend only.

Joel Corcoran: Huh ... I had no idea that the Jonas Brothers had a TV show coming out. See, this is why I need my nieces and nephew to grow up faster. I'm missing that critical tween pop culture demographic in my friends and advisors. Now, ask me anything about Dora the Explorer or Blues Clues, and I'm golden.





Brandon Scott: I think when you record a concert, you are really just trying to get more dollars out of a performance. Yes, analysts thought it would do better but this happens, kind of like when it rains frogs. If Jonas Brothers was an actual movie, I might look at it differently, but I don't buy it as a "bomb". I bet it already surpassed a minuscule production budget. Disappointment, sure. Bomb, no.

Eric Hughes: I agree disappointment is the better word here. Another reason why is the fact that it finished $4 million behind a Tyler Perry movie that dropped nearly 60%.

Reagen Sulewski: It's going to take a couple of weeks to really suss out if this is a bomb or not, since it was a) pretty cheap to make but b) in a genre that's not known for its staying power, but if I may speculate wildly, I wonder if we're not seeing our first film hit by the recession. It's long been a pet theory of mine that in tough economic times, teen spending habits are hit first since they're least likely to have money of their own, and more likely to have those funds cut off first.

Sean Collier: I do happen to have a five-year-old cousin, and I can report that the amount of her Hannah Montana merchandise outnumbers her Jonas Brothers merchandise by a factor of about ten to one. Disney would like the Brothers to be as big a deal as Miley is, but it's just not the case, and the result this weekend reflected that. Probably a bit of a disappointment, but a 3-D concert film failing to pack 'em in? I wouldn't call that a bomb.

David Mumpower: I agree with Sean's and Brandon's points. At the end of the day, everyone in the industry appears guilty of the lazy lateral thinking that the Jonas Brothers are just as good as Hannah Montana. That's like saying Nature Boy Buddy Landell was as good as Ric Flair (about three people reading this get that reference). While this movie has not matched even half of its tracking expectations, it was dirt cheap to do and by concert movie standards, it's one of the biggest debuts ever. This is for a band whom none of us could pick out of a police lineup. And along those lines, I suspect the movie would have done better if the boys had chosen to beat up Rihanna instead of putting on chastity rings. Girls that age like bad boys. Has Team Jonas learned nothing from Twilight?

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