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Kim Hollis: White House Down collapsed like so much monument porn, debuting in fourth place with $24.9 million. What do you think about this opening weekend?

Jason Barney: This is turning out to be a very rotten couple of months for Sony/Columbia, as their other early entry of the summer was After Earth, and that failed miserably at the domestic box office. It is only doing okay internationally. This opening for White House Down is about as bad as it could be for the studio. If you combine the two projects, they spent over $300 million and have had the two biggest flops. White House Down may very well play okay over the holiday week, but you have to think this film is dead on arrival.

I didn’t think this was going to be a smash hit, but I didn’t think it was going to sink this bad. This is far lower than my expectations. If you review the numbers, people looked at the other options in the top 10 and didn’t select White House Down. Man of Steel recovered a bit from the gut wrenching drop last week to take in another $20 million. World War Z was the other option that killed White House Down as the 55% drop is much better than expected. Opening fourth, behind both of last week’s openers, just screams that this was not a film many people wanted to see. A best case scenario has it placing in sixth next week, with Lone Ranger and Despicable Me II grabbing attention.

I believed Channing Tatum’s involvement would deliver a better start for this movie. His presence definitely helped G.I. Joe and 21 Jump Street. As others have stated, maybe this opening would have been higher if Olympus Has Fallen wasn't just a few months old.

Max Braden: A big action movie like this in the height of summer really needs to open much bigger than it did. On paper you could say that this is a special circumstance because (some of) the public has already seen Olympus Has Fallen, but that shouldn't matter after the advertising blitz. When the trailer for this movie played in theaters I was in, the audience reaction was fairly enthusiastic. It pairs two generations of action/comedy stars, so the appeal should have been broad enough to draw a larger audience. The only explanation I can see is that they were all watching The Heat instead.

Bruce Hall: Raise your hand if you wanted to see another movie about terrorists taking over the White House this year?

That's what I thought. Also, raise your hand if you thought the bright spots for Sony at this point in the year would include Evil Dead and This is the End, but NOT After Earth or White House Down?

That's also what I thought. Personally, I'm not sure I saw White House Down earning more than mid-30s, since so many people already saw this movie the first time it came out, when Gerard Butler and Aaron Eckhart were in it. The fact that World War Z has been so well received did not help, as it is well known that Brad Pitt > C-Tates. Which reminds me - the final ironic indignity here may be that the majority of Channing Tatum's female demographic were either across the hall watching Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy, or dragging their kids to see Monsters University.

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