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The future stars of Thor, Prince of Persia and Spider-Man 4 open a movie to...less than $10 million.

Kim Hollis: Brothers, the Lionsgate release starring Natalie Portman, Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal, earned $9.5 million. Should the studio be pleased with this result?

Josh Spiegel: Absolutely. That this movie even made nearly $10 million is a bit of a surprise. Movies about the Iraq War are pretty much guaranteed to not succeed; though Brothers is mostly set in the States, it's also obviously a film set in and dealing with wartime. Lionsgate did a solid job of marketing the film, even if some of the ads kind of gave away what I would imagine is the entire plot; the reviews were solid enough and the actors are still intriguing enough to lure audiences in. Brothers may not be a blockbuster, but Lionsgate should be plenty happy.

Sean Collier: Josh is right - this is about the ceiling for any film dealing with Iraq. It seems that audiences are not, en masse, willing to deal with the last ten years on the big screen yet. This isn't a home run, but it's a fine enough result; I'm sure they'd like some Oscar attention for the leads, but I don't think that's forthcoming.





Michael Lynderey: It's a fairly decent result, especially for this weekend, and the movie will probably have the momentum to finish in or around $30 million. That's not bad, considering that Brothers is gloomy little picture with a trailer that never even tried to hide that fact. And the gloom and doom wasn't redeemed by glowing reviews - rather, critical reception was just pretty good, or mixed. If the main mission statement of Brothers was to receive Oscar nods, though, it looks like they're not succeeding in building up any kind of buzz.

George Rose: They should be thrilled with this result. Breaking $10 million was probably the best case scenario, but for a film that I feel I've already seen just by having watched the trailers, this is a great result. The plot was given away too soon and it unfortunately didn't look that great. The only reason to see this movie was for the cast, and if that's the deciding factor then there are better movies to see. The Men Who Stare At Goats had an infinitely better case and didn't make much more than this. If that large cast of great actors couldn't turn that unique story into a success, why would anyone expect much of a movie where Tobey Maguire acts irrational and overly emo? Been there, saw that in Spider-Man 3.

Reagen Sulewski: This is about double what I was expecting for it, given how dreary the subject matter is. This says a lot for the cast, I think, as you could easily see this making jsut a couple of million, or not even getting a wide release with actors that no one cares about. Then again, maybe feel-bad cinema is in right now, with this and Precious out there.

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