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Kim Hollis: We Bought a Zoo, the feel-good holiday movie from Cameron Crowe, fell 37% to $8.3 million and has a running total of $58 million. What do you think of this result?

Edwin Davies: This is way better than I thought the film was going to do before Christmas since I fully expected it to get slaughtered based on the trailers and just the whole damn premise of the film. Turns out that people like cute animals, who knew? I think the feel good factor definitely helped the film over the holidays, but I'm not sure how much more life it has in it going forward, especially since it is unlikely to get any strong boost from any of the major awards bodies.

Bruce Hall: There's a glut of Oscar bait and fuzzy wuzzy family fare clamoring for our attention at the end of every year, and this movie made a dent and paid its bills in three weeks. Everything from here out is gravy. I don't think there will be much reason to discuss it again after this week, and I doubt it will get much love from the Academy - but We Bought a Zoo is going to finish solidly in the black.

It seems you've won again, Matt Damon.

Max Braden: Two family-friendly-animal-centric holiday films neck and neck! I can't *wait* to see which one wins!

Brett Beach: To build off Max's comment: it might be a horse race, with Oscar nods for War Horse making the difference between an otherwise photo finish. This is also a better than expected run so far, particularly since it didn't explode out of the chute Marley and Me-wise, even with two successful sneak previews and a month for that word-of-mouth to build. I would gather that War Horse is the pick for families with older children, and this the choice for ones for smaller fry, but my question remains: which zoo animal has the Lloyd Dobler role here?

David Mumpower: Ordinarily, Cameron Crowe films are either huge hits or earn less than $35 million domestically. We Bought a Zoo appears to be slotting somewhere in the middle, which is unusual behavior for BOP's most beloved director. I think everyone has touched upon the obvious key aspects, the cut animals, but I also think there is some correlation to Vanilla Sky here. No, the movies do not have anything in common in terms of story but the reason why Vanilla Sky earned $100 million was star power. Due to the glowing quality of Crowe's films, he can talk the most famous actors in the world into starring in whatever role he needs, which is why Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz are willing to be disfigured while Matt Damon and Scarlet Johansson will walk around in animal crap. Rare talents such as Crowe entice A-list actors to do things they would never consider otherwise. And then when the cute animal movie is released, people give it a longer look since it's got Jason Bourne and Black Widow in it.

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