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Eric Hughes: All I can say is I don't know of *anyone* that was excited to see this movie. I mean come on, was anyone expecting that Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li would lead water cooler talk this week?

Reagen Sulewski: I'm as shocked at the failure of this as I am at the failure of that Masters of the Universe movie with Dolph Lundgren and Courtney Cox. Which is to say, not very.

David Mumpower: More than anything else, what I take from this is that it's a cautionary tale for Microsoft on the dangers of waiting too long for a Halo movie. The 1994 release of Street Fighter, a garbage title that always had its cynical eye on the home video market, opened 45% better. Keeping in mind that the average ticket price today is $7.18 as opposed to $4.08 then, it's hard to describe The Legend of Chun Li as anything other than a bomb, especially against a production budget of $50 million. Street Fighter was THE multi-player videogame experience of the early 1990s and Tim is right that timing a movie with the release of the heavily praised Street Fighter 4 was a savvy move in theory, just not in exercise. This is a great example of the mercurial nature of movie-making. All of the right decisions in the corporate office mean nothing if the script sucks and the movie looks terrible.

Marty Doskins: Very good point, David, about Halo. They already seem to be having trouble coming up with improvements in the game series. People losing interest can't be that far behind. If they can catch fanboy interest at its peak (or close to it), they can definitely rake in some bigger box office numbers.

Jai ho!

Kim Hollis: Slumdog Millionaire received the biggest box office bounce of any Academy Award winner for Best Picture since the mid-1990s. This weekend, its 15th in release, marks the first time it finished in the top three. Do you think this was one last hurrah or do you believe it could have a holdover along the lines of My Big Fat Greek Wedding for the next few months?

Joel Corcoran: I'd love to be able to say Slumdog Millionaire will be a holdover, but my gut instinct is that this weekend was simply a last hurrah. I think a lot of people simply didn't know what the movie was all about, but then decided to catch it this weekend after seeing that it won the Oscar.

Brandon Scott: It's not hanging around for a few more months. It's been out for four months already. This doesn't diminish what a remarkable story the film is. But let's be honest, Summer is right around the corner. Watchmen is dropping next week. Slumdog might stay in the top ten for two or three more weeks (still a remarkable feat) but it is fading after that. It's not hitting $170 million or more or anything like that...uh, I don't think it will, anyway.

Tim Briody: Slumdog Millionaire is a rare Best Picture winner that hadn't already run its theatrical course by the time of the actual awards (and was more accessible than, say, No Country for Old Men). It's going to have another couple weeks of solid business before it's shuffled out by new releases.

Reagen Sulewski: The last Best Picture winner to still be in this many theatres the week after it won was Million Dollar Baby, which went on to add about $35 million to its final total. Slumdog has the benefit of being a buzz film on top of this, with a lot of people still curious about it, so I actually see another $50 million as a possibility. This is a film that's made $115 million so far with its most lucrative weekend figure being this last one. Let's not dismiss the power of small numbers just yet.

David Mumpower: I lean toward the side of our numbers guru. In glancing over the schedule from now until the start of May, I don't see enough content to make an exhibitor push a strong moneymaker like this out of the theater. I think it's going to wind up north of $150 million, beating The Curious Case of Benjamin Button handily. That's something I would not have been believed possible at the start of the year. Button had a $60 million lead in mid-January, for God's sake. Slumdog Millionaire had already been in theaters for two months by that point.

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