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James Bond just doesn't open films if he's not James Bond

Kim Hollis: Dream House, the scary movie featuring Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz and Naomi Watts, earned $8.1 million this weekend. Why wasn't Sony able to get more from a PG-13 horror flick?

Edwin Davies: This reminds me of Case 39, the misbegotten Renee Zellweger/Bradley Cooper horror film that was released on the same weekend last year; a film that has bad buzz, bad reviews and a cast which would rather not support it. There's been a lot of bad buzz coming off of this one for a while, mostly to do with the director and cast being unhappy with the final product, and whilst I don't think that most people would have been that aware of it, the fact that Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz refused to do press for the film (especially in the wake of their surprise wedding in June, which is the sort of thing PR companies love to exploit to push a film) must have hurt awareness of it. They also made a dreadful miscalculation in the marketing for the film by revealing the twist of the film in the trailer, rather than highlighting any potentially creepy moments or scenes. The end result wasn't scary and made the film look dumb, an impression that has been borne out by the apocalyptically scathing reviews.

Brett Beach: Until this weekend, I had not been aware that a) the cast was not promoting it out of protest and b)that there had been a brush-up between the studio and the talent about the final product (although the 91 minutes running time should have tipped me off). My question is why would a studio hire a director of Jim Sheridan's caliber - never mind an Oscar winner, Oscar nominee, and James Bond in the cast - and then be surprised if he didn't give them the sort of knock-off dreck that a lesser director might have churned out? This is the director of My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father and In America, for crying out loud. Even as a director for hire on something like Get Rich or Die Tryin', he didn't do a hack job. This situation calls to mind Neil Jordan and In Dreams or Paul Schrader and The Exorcist prequel. Why hire Academy Award caliber talent if you don't want something out of the ordinary? Okay, rant over.

Bruce Hall: Where to begin? The troubled production? The hasty reshoots? The delayed release? The indifferent cast? The derivative sounding plot? The bad press and horrible reviews? The incredibly...er....revealing trailer? The fact that they didn't screen it before release? You can tell as soon as the motorcycle hits the air whether or not he's gonna make the jump. You could see this coming a mile away.

On the other hand, I'm impressed they came that close to ten million. It's entirely possible someone deserves a raise just for THAT.

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