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Coming soon: John Travolta, Nic Cage, Homer Simpson and Shia LaBeouf in a combination live action/animated motorcycle movie

Kim Hollis: Out of Wild Hogs, Ghost Rider, Disturbia, 300 and The Simpsons Movie, which opening do you think has been the most surprising?

Reagen Sulewski: I think I'll have to say Ghost Rider, since that looked really terrible, and it's a comic book movie that I doubt many people even knew existed prior to the film. That succeeds and The Punisher flops?

Tim Briody: I'm going with 300 since it pretty much came out of nowhere to be huge. Disturbia is still going to be the only movie in all of 2007 to have three weekends at the top spot, which is going to make a fantastic trivia question someday.





David Mumpower: Given how much the tracking missed by, I have to say The Simpsons Movie. A lot of good box office analysts were expecting this to wind up in the $35 million range. In fact, Fox's Vice President of distribution, Chris Aronson, is quoted as stating that they had expected right at $40 million. How often is a studio pleasantly surprised by an extra $30 million like this?

Oddly, this is always the area I had been predicting it to make, but I was starting to wonder if my love of The Simpsons had made me too biased to its box office potential.

Reagen Sulewski: Yeah, but how much did Zybowski predict?

Joel Corcoran: Definitely Ghost Rider. A weak lead actor (Nic Cage), several cheesy trailers, a mediocre marketing campaign overall, and a storyline that ticked off fanboys of the comic all combined to make a $45 million opening weekend. And the movie is still likely to end up in the top-20 highest grossing movies of 2007. I'm just completely boggled when it comes to this movie.

Kim Hollis: I'm gonna go with Wild Hogs. It looked terrible and starred people who no one should care about anymore. Its success was baffling to me at the time and remains so now.

Jim Van Nest: I'm with you Kim. For me, not a comic guy, I thought Ghost Rider looked pretty cool in the trailers. Having just seen it, I can say that it sucked pretty bad. But come on: Travolta, Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence? Who DIDN'T see the trailer to Wild Hogs and wonder what kind of info they had on William H Macy? Everything about Wild Hogs screamed "horrible." So to me, it's easily the box office surprise of the year.

Michael Bentley: 300 by a nose over Wild Hogs for me. That opening was a big Keanu-like "Woah" for me.

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