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Kim Hollis: Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 debuted with $23.8 million. What do you think of this result?

Matthew Huntley: Honestly, I'm surprised by how solid this debut is, especially given the 0% positive reviews. Granted, it's not the $31 million the original Paul Blart opened with back in 2009, and given inflation and rising ticket prices, the audience that turned out this weekend is about a third less, but it still proves there's some juice left in this (hopefully limited) franchise's Segway. I doubt it will show the same legs as its predecessor, which went on to gross nearly five times its opening weekend, but its family-friendly content should allow it to hold on relatively well, even in the face of the behemoth that will be Avengers: Age of Ultron - enough, at least, to cover its $39 million production budget and a decent chunk of its advertising budget. That's rather impressive after the six-year Paul Blart hiatus Hollywood blessed us with, but probably not good enough to justify another sequel (thank God).

Edwin Davies: This strikes me as being a pretty decent result, given the terrible reviews and the length of time between the first film and its sequel. We saw last year that both Horrible Bosses and Hot Tub Time Machine failed to turn reasonably popular and liked first films into decent results for their sequels, and I wouldn't have been surprised if Paul Blart did as poorly as those did. Clearly its PG nature meant that it had a broader appeal, so even though the audience shrank by a significant amount it could still bring a decent number of people in. I'd be very surprised if it holds well in the weeks ahead, and if it earns even half of the $146 million the first film managed I'll be shocked, but considering it only cost $30 million to make, a finish around about $60 or 70 million would still be a decent result.

Jason Barney: This is a pretty respectable opening for a film that isn’t on anybody’s radar screen. It is pretty obvious that even those who put this together were just interested in getting the product together, hoping it might earning something. I don’t like the fact that Sony has pushed out an apparently awful product, but I didn’t even see the original, either.

This opening relative to the budget is substantial and the truth is, Paul Blart 2 could earn quite a bit of money. It isn’t going to set any records, and it should drop out of the top 10 very quickly, but the numbers are pointing to this being a very good investment for Sony.

It was made for only $30 million, and more than two-thirds of that was made up in the opening weekend. It will have matched its production budget before the start of weekend #2, and the marketing costs will be taken care of over the next couple of weeks. Don’t get me wrong, I am expecting some awful nasty drops, but these days it is all about the opening. This will end up being a nice little money maker.

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