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Michael Lynderey: Regardless of the opening weekend, this will always be remembered as a major disappointment and misstep for Peter Jackson (and having not seen the film, I'm judging only by the reviews). A year ago, The Lovely Bones was already positioned as this big-time December Oscar contender, a movie that came off like a pretty obvious lock for $100 million and a lot of longevity with audiences (the same was true of Nine, by the way). Somehow, the momentum on the film just died - many reviewers outright hated it, and its platform release numbers were almost identical to those of the Fantastic Mr. Fox, a disturbing sign indeed. Nowadays, all Lovely Bones can really hope for is to pull together a $40 million-$50 million final gross and quietly fade into the background, which may well be making the best out of a bad situation.

Matthew Huntley: Given THE LOVELY BONES' lackluster reviews and poor word-of-mouth, I think its unexpectedly high debut is even more impressive. Its limited release run can be described as shaky at best, but it seems Paramount's shift from selling this as an awards contender to relying on the popularity of the source book and director/actors was wise. It obviously paid off this weekend, but its future is questionable.

Shalimar Sahota: An okay debut, but I wouldn't call it a success yet. Given all the credentials, I was thinking about watching this, and the negative feedback has now put me in two minds. If it fails to pick up a string of Academy Award nominations then this one is going to struggle to make back its $100 million budget.

Reagen Sulewski: I think the lesson learned here is that audiences don't pay attention to negative notice from awards ceremonies. Not being included just doesn't register with them. All they see is a thriller with a sort of supernatural element. In some ways this is pretty similar to the performance of The Time Traveler's Wife, which went thud with critics, but still brought out fans of the book.

Tom Macy: Up to this point I dismissed Lovely Bones as a miss but not a particularly memorable disappointment - I mean, what do you expect when you cast Mark Wahlberg? But now I have to give it some credit. It's not a runaway hit, but in the face of much stiffer competition this is nothing shake your head at (is that a thing people say?). Coupled with a producer credit on the over achieving District 9, you gotta chalk at least a part of this result to the power PJ generates on a marquee. How many days until The Hobbit comes out?

David Mumpower: I'm going to fly in the face of convention here and argue that while the first weekend in wide release is a success, this release is still going to be remembered as a worst case scenario result. I can't help but feel that Peter Jackson is missing a lot of opportunities in following up on the success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Does he need the further professional dominance? Of course not. With King Kong and now this, he's had two can't miss projects that would have done quite a bit better if only they had been better movies.

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