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Matthew Huntley: Yes, because the commercials featuring Carell and Segel (when they're fighting each other with Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots) reminded adults, especially young adults watching ESPN (on which this commercial mostly aired), that "the guy from The Office and 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "the guy from How I Met Your Mother and Forgetting Sarah Marshall" were lending their voices to an animated feature. When they saw this, they were probably more tempted to see the movie because of Carell and Segel's usual brand of humor. Right there, you have more adults wanting to see the movie.

Yes, I do think Carell will get a bump from the film, but not so much Segel or Brand. Carell's voice is the most recognizable and he proves he can do a funny accent. The other two are as distinguishable.

David Mumpower: None of us has an empirical basis for the conclusion since it's impossible to quantify, but I am of the opinion that those ads aided the box office. Universal made the correct determination to tie those ads in with ESPN during a time when the network was experiencing unusually high ratings for the month of July due to the NBA free agency story. So, they had the eyeballs and managed to tie the stars of two well regarded films, The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, together for consumers. I don't think either actor gets a huge bump from this and I'm inclined to believe that since Carell is already an established lead, Segel is the only one who gets much aid from the whole thing. I do, however, believe that other studios have paid careful attention to this turn of events and will try to find avenues to exploit this type of marketing in the future. If you're going to pay a star to talk into a microphone, you should do everything possible to notify consumers of this. Of course, I believe that nine times out of ten it's better to discover a Mark Walton, voice of Rhino in Bolt, than it is to overpay a famous actor. Despicable Me happens to be that tenth time.

Kim Hollis: I also think that having Carell and Segel in the commercials provided a slight boost to the box office of Despicable Me. Since they're both recognizable from both TV and film at this point, a lot of fans can make a connection that a guy they like is a voice in this movie. Ordinarily, I'm not so sure that voice acting matters, but in this case, the fact that Universal went out of their way to promote Carell and Segel gave the impression that there's something special about their presence in the film.

If you hear a creepy chattering noise...

Kim Hollis: Predators, the re-boot/sequel to the long-standing franchise, earned $24.8 million. How should Fox feel about this result?

Josh Spiegel: It cost Fox $40 million to make and they buried it with awful, nonexistent marketing, so they ought to be dancing in the boardrooms. I was genuinely surprised to realize that this movie was opening on July 9th when I found out about ten days ago. I saw nothing on TV for this one, and if Fox was trying to blanket sports coverage with ads, they did only a good enough job of appealing to the core audience, and no one else. Still, a solid result.

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