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Let's have a hoedown to celebrate.

Kim Hollis: Hannah Montana: The Movie opened to $32.3 million, the second best Easter weekend performance ever. Is this more, less, or about what you were expecting from the popular Disney channel comedy?

Josh Spiegel: Not sure if I'll be in the minority here, but I'm saying less. When you consider that the last Hannah Montana movie came out with $31 million during its first weekend (and could have done more had it been in over 1,000 theaters), having this one barely top that is surprising. Obviously, the character and Miley Cyrus herself are still very popular with the right crowd, but I wonder if having a major competitor in the family film genre, Monsters vs. Aliens, took a bit of the edge off this film's opening success. That aside, the fact that the film made less than twice its opening-day gross over the whole weekend shows how much of a one-weekend wonder the movie will be, the Easter holiday notwithstanding.

Brandon Scott: It was becoming tougher to gauge what this would do since the Jonas Brothers Concert Movie disappointed. I would probably side with Josh, though, that it is less than expected, especially since F&F tore up the box office last weekend. This isn't a huge shock, more of a mild rumble. Still a very solid result, though.





Joel Corcoran: It's far less than what I expected. The best Easter weekend performance to date has been Scary Movie 4 at $40.2 million (and, no, I don't know why either), which it earned in 2006. That's equivalent to $42.3 million adjusting for inflation, and at a time when box office receipts for the year are up compared to past years, I'm surprised that Hannah Montana fell that far short of the #1 position. Also, if we continue using inflation-adjusted dollars, Hannah Montana would be in fifth place, not second. Panic Room (#3 in absolute dollars) opened to $30.1 million in 2002, which is equivalent to $35.4 million in today's dollars, and The Matrix (#4 in absolute dollars) opened to $27.8 million ten years ago, which is also (oddly) equivalent to $35.4 million today. Given the immense popularity that Hannah Montana enjoys, I'm kind of stunned that it couldn't do better than any of these other films on the same opening weekend.

Tim Briody: See, it's pretty obvious now that the Jonas Brothers were just a product of the hype machine. Their movie bombing completely exposed them and they were a poor comparison for Hannah Montana, which is the real deal. It was completely kneecapped in the internal multiplier department by Easter weekend (we've finally seen a sub-2.0 multiplier!), but that might actually help it to not completely fall off a cliff next weekend.

Sean Collier: There were so many variables in play here, any prediction would've been tough. The performance of the Best of Both Worlds movie would've inflated expecations, but then again, that film had 3-D inflated totals. The Jonas Brothers flop was a bad sign, but Miley is a bigger star by far. The Easter weekend would seem like a handicap for a kid's film, but that does also free kids and parents up for Friday afternoon viewings on the long weekend - which would've been matinee pricing, further complicating things. I'd say this one performed well and leave it at that.

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