New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Kim Hollis: Warm Bodies, the world's first zom-rom-com, opened to $20.4 million this weekend. What are your thoughts on this result?

Matthew Huntley: I think this result is best described as "expectations pleasantly met." There were no real surprises here, but at the same time no disappointments. Given the film's mix of two stable and well-liked genres, the funny trailers and ads, and the skewing toward the female demographic on a heavy sports weekend, it was more or less a no-brainer (no pun intended) Warm Bodies would excel on Super Bowl weekend. The strong reviews didn't hurt, either. And given Valentine's Day is less than two weeks away, the movie should be well on its way to a marginal profit. It's another win for Lionsgate.

Bruce Hall: I can't really add much to that other than to say how incredible it is that it took zombies to make a romantic comedy everyone can love. And to make two thirds of your budget back opening weekend and still have not just Valentine's Day but also an inevitably strong home video run to look forward to leaves nothing to complain about.

Brett Ballard-Beach: Even post-Twilight, with every YA novel (and their kid sister to boot) being adapted into a movie, this struck me as a ridiculously hard sell so kudos to the promotions department (although I had always thought of Shaun of the Dead as the first rom zom com, though, truthfully more of a bromance). I am happy that Jonathan Levine followed up 50/50 with an equally challenging concept to bring to the mainstream masses, and the fact that something quirky and oddball struck home with both its target audience and the critical community, brings me almost as much cheer as P. Phil letting us know we're in for an early spring.

Reagen Sulewski: First of all, I have an angry Simon Pegg on line 2. Secondly, I find the comparisons to Twilight kind of misplaced, in that this movie seems to have a great deal of a sense of humor about itself. So yes, it's a sort of "cross-species" romance, but that's like saying Batman & Robin and Road to Perdition are both comic book movies. So while it was never going to be a huge phenomenon (I wouldn't have had a clue it was based on a series), the fact that they were able to embrace the ludicrousness of it helped tremendously to sell it.

Tim Briody: All right, the only similarity between Warm Bodies and Twilight is that Summit released them both. End of story. This was a clever concept that was well marketed and released on a perfect weekend for this type of film. It drew more females than males and was fairly cheap to make. Good on all those involved.

Felix Quinonez Jr.: I don’t think there's really much to say about this one. It performed well enough but it didn't exactly smash expectations and it sure didn't bomb. It's a nice performance everyone involved can be happy about. I'm really more excited about the positive reviews.

Continued:       1       2