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On another note, I must say it was nice to McConaughey open a movie to decent numbers in which he doesn't play a either mimbo or the other half of a cute romantic couple. Perhaps if Lawyer does well enough, he'll be offered heavier roles in the future. We've seen enough of his Fool's Gold / Surfer, Dude / Ghosts of Girlfriends Past-type movies.

Brett Beach: It is interesting to me that none of the three films broke out big this weekend and yet all were moderately to more than moderately successful even though they all were all competing for (relatively) older audiences that don't necessarily come out on opening weekend. With the best reviews of the three and the best potential for positive word-of-mouth/legs going forward, The Lincoln Lawyer should be able to become a modest sleeper, making back its budget domestically at least and surpassing Limitless in the final tally. It sounds like an airport/beach novel made into a comparable movie. For the cast alone, I am intrigued. On the Groupon front, it doesn't sound like it had that much impact financially this weekend, but I will be curious to see what future films this promotion is employed for.

On two related notes: I was blissfully unaware of Surfer, Dude until two days ago and I wish I still was. I was also blissfully unaware that A Time to Kill was remembered fondly by so many 15 years later. I have no desire to ever revisit that film.

Reagen Sulewski: Whoever decided where to target the ad campaign for this film deserves a medal, as I literally saw zero ads for this film before release. This could have easily landed in single digits. On a macro level, though, this brings into focus the erosion of both the legal thriller and Matthew McConaughey's career. This would have been one of the most highly anticipated movies of 1997. Now: dumped in March with an alternative campaign that included coupon giveaways.

Max Braden: Maybe it was targeted markets, because I saw endless ads for this, easily more than ones for Limitless. And what I saw kind of took the thrill out of the thriller, suggesting that the climax was a foregone conclusion. I agree with Reagen, this felt a lot like a '90s movie.

David Mumpower: I concur with the assessment that despite the hefty budget for a film of this ilk, this feels like a better result than should have happened. And I believe that Josh touched upon the causality for this. That Groupon ad is the most important aspect of The Lincoln Lawyer in my estimation. This represents the (short term) future of movie marketing in that the $6 deal in place was tantamount to free advertising for the film.

Groupon almost assuredly lies up about their built-in user base, but they want people to believe it's north of 30 million. Even if we estimate that only half of the people in the country bother reading the deals every day (and that number may be high or low, it's impossible to say), I think it's fair to argue that maybe as many as 15 million people were suddenly informed last week of a movie called The Lincoln Lawyer. I don't know how the splits are going to be handled as anyone who has worked with these 50% off sites know that they split the revenue 50/50, meaning that it's only 25% of the revenue of an ordinary sale. The studio doesn't care, though. That's the exhibitor's concern. The studio has built up new awareness of an otherwise unheralded product that will now sell better on home video in addition to having a stronger than expected opening weekend.

Get used to this play, folks. The Groupon movie ticket deal is about to saturate this industry. I am absolutely certain of this.

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