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Josh Spiegel: As the week went forward, I figured that $30 million was the ceiling for The Social Network's opening weekend, so $22 million is a perfectly solid number, especially considering the film's well-deserved Oscar buzz. When I heard that the budget was in the range of $40-50 million, I became even more baffled at the immediate reactions of other box-office predictors. The movie's word-of-mouth should be solid (even if some of the praise may seem hyperbolic, the movie's really great), and it should be in theaters for pretty much the rest of the calendar year.

What's more, though the marketing may not have referenced Fincher or Sorkin's previous works (and maybe I'm the only one, but I feel like a) Fincher's well-known enough and b) none of his previous films would make an obvious reference point for The Social Network), I can't stress enough that this movie had the best trailer I've seen in a long, long time. In the same way that the movie does, the trailer made the content seem a lot more ominous that it should on paper.

Joshua Pasch: Admittedly, every now and again there is a movie that I want to see so badly that it ends up skewing my expectations for what it should gross at the box office. Such was the case here as my imagination got the better of me. I thought for sure that tracking was underselling Social Network's potential and I had hopes this could break out to the tune of $28-32 million. I even thought there was an outside chance that this could've been one of those openings that shocks everyone on Monday morning with a $40+ million weekend. Granted I recognized that number was unlikely, but even considering it shows how much potential I thought this had.

At work last week, someone (albeit someone with little to no knowledge of how the box office functions) prognosticated that The Social Network would "open to $100 million this weekend because the audience includes 500 million facebook users." Not the most sound logic I've ever encountered, but apparently, I wasn't the only one with high expectations.

Regardless, $22 million is just fine for an adult drama and my high hopes and unrealistic expectations are now being redirected at the film's legs. I'm going to say it now, this one will be as leggy as Fincher's last film, Benjamin Button. That would put the gross for this right around $110 and no one will be asking whether money was left on the table after that.

Tim Briody: In hindsight it would have been rather hilarious for us to have had this conversation via Facebook. This is a totally okay opening and the table is now set up for a nice run over the next couple weeks and some major awards noise.

Shalimar Sahota: Similarly, I was expecting somewhere in the region of $30 million; however, I wouldn't consider this to be a disappointment. My theory on why it didn't take off on the weekend is kinda the same as what Matthew highlighted; maybe people just didn't know what it was. And those that did were probably put off by the whole premise. I mean, it's a film about the genesis of Facebook. I remember when it was first announced and just thinking, "how exciting can that be?" I can only assume some potential audiences were thinking the same thing. However, as already said, being a well reviewed adult drama, I wouldn't be surprised if word-of-mouth allowed this to survive long enough to make its way to near enough $100 million.

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