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Jason Lee: I look forward to Holiday 2011, when we get treated to "The Holiday Season" by James Cameron, which will appropriately come with the subtitle "Help Me Yet Again Break My Own Record".

The Gods were on his side

Kim Hollis: Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief opened to $31.1 million. Is this more, less, or about what you were expecting?

Josh Spiegel: A bit more, but not too much more. It's no surprise that Fox wanted to make people assume that Percy Jackson was a creative cousin to Harry Potter; along with having Chris Columbus as the director, presenting three young leads, two male and one female, alongside a bevy of well-known actors, from Sean Bean to Pierce Brosnan to Uma Thurman, the Harry Potter connections are inescapable. Also, with Avatar finally winding down (well, maybe not completely, but it's obviously not as dominant with more movies flooding the marketplace), young boys were looking for a new movie to check out. Percy Jackson fit the bill.

Michael Lynderey: It's more than I would've thought, and a decent result for a subgenre that has been faltering lately. But the number isn't as inexplicable to me as, say, Dear John's - Percy Jackson had some summer-esque special effects, the novelty of being the first movie in a while to use Greek mythology, and a few recognizable faces to attract adult audiences. The fact that no children's movie had really broken out so far in 2010 helped immensely, and the lack of anything appealing to a younger demographic until early March is going to help with legs. So, Fox may have the franchise they wanted with this one.





Reagen Sulewski: Let's hear it for formula! From most accounts this series just crosses out "Harry Potter" and "wizards" to make the appropriate changes, so for a series that doesn't have nearly the heat, this is a very good result. Expect them to get at least two sequels out of this.

But you know who's got to be really pissed is the producers of Clash of the Titans.

Tom Macy: It's weird when you start realizing that all the popular movies are ones you absolutely no interest in seeing (now, if the film were called Peter Jackson & The Olympians like I originally thought when I first saw the poster, that would be a different story). When I saw the scope of the special effects in the trailer, I assumed if that much money was being put into this film, there had to be a solid built-in audience somewhere, and it turns out I was right. Not being plugged into the pulse of popular teen books series I don't know if Percy's overall popularity is more widespread than the likes of The Spiderwick Chronilces, Inkheart and The Vampire's Assistant and if that is the chief reason it succeeded in the market where those other films did not. But I will say, based on trailers alone - since that's all I have to go by - of those four films if I had to watch one, it'd be Peter - excuse me - Percy Jackson.

Jason Lee: If it's even possible, I was more surprised by this gross than that of Valentine's Day. How on earth did this cheesy, fantasy kids movie with it's cheesy, nonsensical commercials manage to do what The Golden Compass, Eragon, The Dark Is Rising, etc. fail at doing? The commercials could have featured the line "Watch it at 8:00 pm this Sunday on ABC Family!" and I would have believed it. Kudos to Fox, but I bet you anything that the sequel bombs out.

Kim Hollis: I'm with you, Jason. I saw nothing about Percy Jackson that made it stand out from every other so-so or awful kid flick that has been released over the past few years. I have no idea where this audience came from.

Pete Kilmer: It's about right for this movie. After seeing this movie I expect it to quickly drop off. The direction was a by the numbers route from Chris Columbus and the most of the actors who weren't Kevin McKidd or Sean Bean or really anyone under the age of 30 were terrible. Logan Lerman was pretty flat. He's not gonna be the new Peter Parker anytime soon. The story missed out on tons of things (how can you not use the battle skills of Annabeth when you go out of the way to mention them?). Pierce Brosnan, McKidd, Bean, and Uma Thurman were all excellent in their roles. It would have been cool to see a movie about them.

One thing I hope is that Kevin McKidd gets some play from this for more movies. When I pointed out to the girlfriend's son that he was "Soap" from Modern Warfare 2, he freaked out and wanted to see him in the MW2 movie.

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