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Max Braden: It's a fine result relative to cost, but I could imagine Summit might be so used to teen girl box office, and looking at Valentine's Day's massive opening weekend thinking, "What did we miss here?" Maybe if they'd picked Meryl Streep to play the older love interest, and threw in some musical sequences...

These blockbuster bombs don't go off unless you hit them juuuuuuuuuuust right

Kim Hollis: Just Wright, a romantic comedy in the Love & Basketball vein that stars Queen Latifah and Common, opened to $8.3 million with roughly the same per location average as Letters to Juliet. Should Fox Searchlight be pleased with this result?

Josh Spiegel: I'd say yes, but my amount of enthusiasm about this result is pretty much...nothing. From the reviews I've read, Just Wright is about as by-the-numbers as a romantic comedy can get (I'd even read comparisons to it being a movie-of-the-week), so this result could've been a lot worse. If Queen Latifah's satisfied with doing these smaller movies, then all the power to her. Just not something I'll ever be checking out, I guess.

Matthew Huntley: I don't think I'm alone on this when I say there's not much of a catch to seeing Just Wright. Don't get me wrong - I'll give any movie a chance, but did Fox Searchlight really make this one stand out in any way? The marketing was rather bland and I never got a sense of what the conflict was, other than he's a basketball player and she's...I don't know what she is. With this in mind, I guess Fox Searchlight should be pleased with the box-office result because they obviously got people into the theater (and the budget is relatively modest), but I'd be curious to ask the movie's patrons what they thought the movie was about before going (aside from being a standard romantic comedy). I feel like I'm missing something.





Reagen Sulewski: These times when a small film does exactly as it's supposed to are the hardest ones to write about. Ultimately what we're left with is a couple of minor stars and a production that didn't screw anything up shepherding an unremarkable-looking film to the finish line. Good job, I guess.

Max Braden: I never even saw any advertising for this movie, so that's eight million more than I would have expected.

David Mumpower: This answer is in no way box office related, but Love & Basketball and Brown Sugar are two of my favorite movies of the 2000s. I have always viewed Just Wright as a movie made especially for people like me who love those two films. Anyone else who goes to see them is just a happy bonus for the studio. Also, I am surprised by how good an actor Common is. He’s started to remind me of David Bowie as that rare musician who may have missed his calling as a thespian.

Iron Man, all jets ablaze, he fights and smite'n with repulsor rays!

Kim Hollis: Iron Man 2 fell 59% to $53 million. It has earned $212.2 million in ten days. Does this change your opinion about its long-term performance? Also, when the summer is over, what do you expect the pecking order to be between Shrek Forever After, Toy Story 3 and Iron Man 2?

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