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Kim Hollis: The Man of Steel, the latest attempt by Warner Bros to reboot Superman as a tentpole franchise, opened to $128.7 million. What are your thoughts on this result?

Jay Barney: Regardless of how big the numbers are, it is all good news for Warner Brothers. I don’t think calling it a $129 million four-day take or a $117 million over three days matters one bit. Sure, outpacing Toy Story 3 means something, but old records are being beaten all the time nowadays. The real news is how big of an opening this is and what it means for future of the DC universe.

Such an impressive launch insures that Warner Bros can march forward with their plans to market their own characters the way that Marvel has done going all the way back to Spiderman. They will have some work to do, as some of those characters are not as recognizable as the Marvel ones, but they are over the first hurdle at this point. With this sort of mega opening, the foundation has been established.

I am really interested to see what happens next weekend. Superman has had such a huge start, it will be interesting to see if it has positioned itself for a strong second weekend. The competition is going to be fierce with Monsters University and World War Z opening. You have to love the summer box office.

Bruce Hall: Warner Bros needed this one, didn't they? And as was alluded to above, the final numbers are almost academic because the most important thing is that the success of Man of Steel ensures that whatever plans exist for the future DC Comics universe can move forward, guaranteeing at least ten more solid years of superhero tentpoles. If the words "superhero fatigue" have ever passed your lips, I must warn you - it hasn't even begun.

Shalimar Sahota: Staggering. I was a little doubtful that it would cross the $100 million mark. I imagine everyone knew that Warners had a lot riding on this and they've been marketing the hell out it (a week before the film opened, one commercial break was simply taken up with the latest trailer for the film). After the disappointment of Sucker Punch, Zack Snyder also really needed a hit and having Christopher Nolan involved as a producer most likely helped reassure the diehard fans to at least check this out. I think part of this success can also be attributed to Marvel Studios. Since Iron Man they've managed to set the bar pretty high, giving Warners and DC something to attain to.

Reagen Sulewski: I don't read much into breaking monthly records, since those are quite situational, but regardless of that fact, this is a more than adequate start for WB. I had my doubts that the public was ready to embrace Superman again, but the huge amount of emphasis they put on Chris Nolan's involvement is to me the key factor. I don't think that's particularly surprising to anyone, since we're much more into the era where directors and producers can make or break a project. What's interesting to me is that the scattershot technique of ads actually works - generally this results in a confused marketplace. If I could find a common theme among them, it was that the stakes were being raised in this story. Although this was essentially using the same plot as the new Star Trek sequel (and in retrospect, the coy game Paramount played with Cumberbatch's identity seems like a colossal mistake), they were able to make it look like the plot of this film *mattered*, and that we were going to set to see Superman super-fight. That's all people wanted, apparently.

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