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Not through good spelling, clearly

Kim Hollis: Inglourious Basterds, the Quentin Tarantino film starring Brad Pitt, opened to $38.1 million. How did the Weinsteins pull off such an impressive result?

Josh Spiegel: Well, it helps to have Brad Pitt in a war movie, first of all. Whether or not people like the movie, Pitt is an actor whose presence, at the very least, won't equal fewer audience members. Quentin Tarantino's name alongside that, and an action-packed war movie to boot, and this result isn't too shocking. I was a little surprised at how well it did, but that the movie did do well enough to top the weekend isn't shocking at all. All this means is that the Weinsteins live to fight another day and shamelessly market another Oscar campaign.

Tim Briody: Actually, Josh, considering this is $12 million better than Tarantino's previous best opening, this total is pretty darn shocking. A little bit of this can be attributed to the presence of Pitt, but I'm surprised at the level of mainstream success Inglourious Basterds had. I would doubt that he's picked up that much of an audience since the Kill Bill films.

David Mumpower: The first aspect of this I would note is that Inglourious Basterds has earned as much in three days as the similarly themed (but less fun) Tom Cruise film, Valkyrie, managed in its first six days. Given the differences in late December release versus late summer release, the final box office tallies of the films shouldn't be significantly different (Valkyrie wound up with $83.1 million). Even so, this has to feel like a huge win for the previously struggling The Weinstein Co. They needed to demonstrate that they could open a film huge and they've done that. As to how it happened, the ads for this film cleverly played up the silliness of it all. Giving Brad Pitt a goofy accent and a gloriously outdated Chicago Typewriter as his weapon of choice created the perfect tone for a Tarantino film while Pitt's presence added a largess to the project that his previous release, Grindhouse, lacked, no offense to Kurt Russell and Josh Brolin. This felt like the last big summer film and it performed to that level as well, a rarity in this day and age.

Max Braden: This is a surprise. I'd been expecting Basterds to perform like the Kill Bill movies. This opening beats Ocean's Thirteen and nearly matches Ocean's Eleven. I get the impression that Brad Pitt and Quentin Tarantino amplified each other. There was plenty of advertising, which most recently focused on the humor more than the killing. Pitt's hamming put me off the movie a little but I guess it worked for the wider audience.





Jason Lee: I agree with everyone above who credited Pitt with helping to boost the weekend total, but I also think the subject matter has much broader appeal than Tarantino's previous films. Jackie Chan's comedic martial arts films aside, kung fu movies just don't play that well in the US. Seeing Tarantino tackle WWII has a greater "must see" quality, I think.

Reagen Sulewski: I do wonder how many World War II buffs out there who aren't familiar with his style but go out of their way to see any WWII films were severely confused by Tarantino's take on the Great Conflict.

While I'm loath to give Eli Roth credit for anything, I think he might also have a small bit of credit here. Not as an actor (cause, who's he?) but as a director, for grabbing the shlock ball and running with it and culturing an audience that's more receptive to over-the-top violence.

Sean Collier: This was obviously a good bit off from what I predicted in last week's Hollywood Psych. I thought that we'd have a virtual repeat of Kill Bill's numbers - Tarantino has never opened higher, and Pitt, while popular, isn't guaranteed money. While Pitt certainly helped, I still don't think he made the difference. My guess is this - there are a great many Pulp Fiction fans in the world who admire Tarantino, but aren't willing to go too far with him; that is, they don't care enough to commit to buying two Kill Bill tickets, or sitting in a Grindhouse screening for four hours, or figuring out what the hell Jackie Brown was supposed to be. This is probably the most accessible Tarantino film since Pulp Fiction - and his casual fans came out for it.

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