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Which Greek are we getting him to, anyway? Jimmy the Greek? Nia Vardalos?

Kim Hollis: Get Him to the Greek, the spin-off from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, opened to $17.6 million. Are you surprised the Russell Brand/Jonah Hill comedy performed so closely in line to its predecessor's $17.7 million debut?

David Mumpower: In yet another weekend of overall box office disappointment, this is the "success story" of the bunch. Given the lackluster trailers that oddly highlighted the presence of Puffy Combs over everyone else, I hadn't expected much from this title. A virtual draw with its predecessor (prior to ticket price inflation) feels like a win to me. Something I find fascinating about comedies is how star-independent they are. Yes, the presence of a big name gives a title a better chance to break out, but for the middle tier stuff like this, word-of-mouth is everything. I think Get Him to the Greek is going to wind up north of $60 million. Given the modest investment of $40 million for the project, everyone should be happy here. Except Russell Brand haters, of whom there are a surprising amount.





Matthew Huntley: To comment on the end of David's reply, I think the number of Russell Brand fans supersedes the number of Russell Brand haters, which is good news for Get Him to the Greek's future. And, like David, I believe this film will have good legs ahead of it, similar, probably, to Sarah Marshall's. For a film with no A-listers, that's pretty good and the struggling Universal should count their blessings.

I'm not surprised its opening was so close to its predecessor, since it was obviously attracting the same audience, which clearly hasn't that grown much since the last film. I actually expected a higher number given the better release date (Sarah opened in April, Greek opened in June), but perhaps the Russell Brand haters who liked Sarah avoided this movie and that accounts for the softer opening.

Kim Hollis: I think we actually have a case here where the movie that looked best actually *did* the best this weekend (out of new openers, anyway). And while I think that the previews and commercials for Get Him to the Greek have been extremely scattershot, there was enough funny there to make a decent number of people want to take a look. Since Sarah Marshall has a nice fan base, I think that Get Him to the Greek was able to pull in enough people for a solid opening weekend. It's not that easy to tell that the two films are related, so I'd certainly say that this first weekend is a win.

Reagen Sulewski: What I'm wondering is when the last time a film with two leads as unlikeable/offputting as this did this well? I'm pretty sure Russell Brand is British for "Dane Cook" and Jonah Hill probably peaked when he wanted people to ask him about his wiener. Wrenching this kind of opening weekend out of two actors most people wouldn't cross the street to punch in the face is something of an achievement. The lessons of Old School were well learned by Hollywood, I suppose.

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