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Mamma Mia! Meets Freaky Friday could be the next big thing in horror

Kim Hollis: The age-old debate about front-loading versus legs takes an interesting turn with High School Musical 3, which was clearly front-loaded on Friday. Do you feel High School Musical 3 has met its paying customer demand or do you expect it to behave like Mamma Mia! meets Freaky Friday?

Brandon Scott: Based on my apparent ignorance on these films, I truly cannot say. I suspect it won't make under $10 million next weekend. Still seems like far too much to me. What did this thing cost to produce?

Scott Lumley: The budget on this one was a minuscule $13 million, so we're already looking at one of the most profitable films of the year right here. It's not exactly Fireproof yet, but the folks at Disney have to be mighty happy with this result. And oh yes, this thing will have legs... long, long legs.





Sean Collier: Well OBVIOUSLY all the nation's parents were home watching a combination of the World Series and Penn State-Ohio State on Saturday, thus refusing to drive the kids to the theater. Is it possible that the target audience outgrew the franchise between HSM2 and now? If so, there might not be legs. Otherwise, though, it'll run until Christmas.

David Mumpower: This is a gut reaction rather than one based on the data at hand. Given the paltry Friday-to-Sunday internal multiplier, the title looks heavily front-loaded. I am going to ignore the facts at hand and make an educated guess that the film behaves like a solid family film from here on out. I think that kids are going to lean on their parents to make an effort to see this in theaters. Given the lousy quality of upcoming November releases due to the writer's strike, they should be worn down over time and give in. I just cannot believe that the 100 million North Americans who have seen High School Musical 2 will completely abandon the third film to the point that it fails to clear $100 million.

Kim Hollis: My gut disagrees with David's. I think it's going to drop off drastically. Halloween Friday is a terrible night for movies anyway, and there are other shiny things like Madagascar 2 encouraging kids to "move it move it" to movie theaters in the coming weeks.

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