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Also, it's worth pointing out that, even though he plays the nerdy character in The Rock, Nicolas Cage is not and has never been a believable nerd. Jay Baruchel will always be that.

David Mumpower: Josh, I completely disagree on Cage. He's one of the ugliest, goofiest looking guys I've ever seen. If he's not a nerd, I don't know what one looks like.

Michael Lynderey: Kind of a question mark, this one. Could do $100 million. Clearly it was positioned to do so by the studio, but this type of movie has a habit of going under that, especially if it doesn't have a couple of fail safes - a really big star, some incredible special effects, name recognition, etc. - to keep it from disappointing. This one doesn't have those fail safes.

July in general has a few of these weird special effects movies that really inspire the "will they or won't they" (make $100 million) question in me - Predators, Salt, Last Airbender. None of them look as commercial as your typical summer $50 million opener / $130 million totaler. I mean, I guess Last Airbender has some rabid fanbase somewhere just ready to storm the theaters, but those other three...

As for Jay Baruchel, I think he said somewhere he wants to quit acting (it wasn't quite a Shermanesque statement, though). He filmed She's Out of My League in early 2008, a role he is perfectly suited to. I usually don't consider voice acting to be a lead role, but yes, the Sorcerer film is a big role, at least in theory. But I guess they wanted a Michael Cera type, rather than one of those muscle-bound Australian imports like Sam Worthington or Liam Hemsworth (or anyone else from Australia named Hemsworth, for that matter).

I don't think the nerd thing is new at all, by the way. It's a proud old movie tradition - well, you mostly see it in teen movies - and it goes back to John Hughes at the least. That was another guy who took care of his kids, as David said.

Max Braden: The first trailer made me think of elements from a number of other movies, mostly positive: the fantasy fun of Big Trouble in Little China, the buddy comedy fun of The Adventures of Remo Williams, the special effects coolness of Jumper (without the downsides of the rest of that movie), the villainous counterparts of Spider-Man, and the magical fun of what Harry Potter would have been if he'd started after the age of Hogwarts. I especially like the way the kicking music sets the tone for the trailer. It's an obvious tent-pole movie, but the target audience does feel a little narrow to me. It skews a bit older than Harry Potter but younger than most of Bruckheimer's other movies. The love interest feels thrown in as a token grab for female audiences (is that Kristen Stewart? most people will ask). The downside is that any mention of The Vampire's Assistant (total gross: under $14 million) in the same breath will poison the box office well. I also think that Baruchel's name is irrelevant to the movie's performance. Shia LaBeouf could have been cast in the same role and probably pulled in more money, but I don't think Baruchel, unfamiliar to most audiences, is going to hurt the movie at all. This is mostly about the magic and Nicolas Cage.

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