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James Cameron has hypnotized you. You will see this movie a second and a third time!

Kim Hollis: Do you think Avatar's opening weekend, with its $242 million worldwide and $77 million domestically, can be judged now, or do you think we need to wait until the holiday season has played out to make a call about its performance?

Reagen Sulewski: If it had only done, say, $40 or 50 million, the knives would be out already, so I'd say it's fair to look at this opening weekend and say that it's done a good job so far. The final judgment is going to vary a lot depending on whether it peters out at $250 million, or makes it to $400 million plus.

Sean Collier: Basically, this weekend kept the books open on Avatar. $50 million or less and we would've been calling it a flop; $90 million or more and we would have been calling it Titanic 2. In this range, it's doing fine, and we have to wait to pass judgment. One of the more interesting aspects of the run is going to be how much of a sci-fi fanbase it'll build up; that will go a long way to determining the practicality of all the sequels and encyclopedias and theme parks in outer space and genetic research into manufacturing big blue actors Cameron is talking about.





Tom Macy: Check back after New Year's. Sure it can be judged. I'm judging it right now. But I don't think this past weekend is the full story of Avatar, it's just - pun alert - the tip of the iceberg. Maybe I'm overly optimistic about its legs - I was certainly wrong about Princess and the Frog, which I'm totally bummed about - but judging by the nearly universally positive response - the audience I saw it with was totally enthusiastic - anyone who was on the fence about whether to see Avatar will probably come out during the holiday period.

Michael Lynderey: It's definitely too early to judge Avatar now, and that's always the case for a movie like this, which has no ingrained fanbase and was always going to glean a large chunk of its box office from word-of-mouth and Christmas legs. How long those legs are, and how sturdy, is the key factor that'll make the difference between Avatar being just a solid grosser or a real box office monstrosity (a $300 million+ earner, say). $200 million domestically now seems like an easy lock, so I'd say the movie's traveled beyond the worst-case-scenario levels.

Matthew Huntley: I think we (and Fox) will have to wait until the holiday season has played out to know whether or not to call the film's performance a full-fledged victory. With a production and marketing budget that supposedly runs close to half a billion dollars, the film isn't in the green yet, but I think it's safe to say a collective sigh of relief can be had for how well the film has done so far.

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