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Jay Barney: Western comedies would seem like a tough genre to sell, and it would have to be the right movie to bring ticket sales. Any success would have to be based on the quality of the film and word-of-mouth, and both appear to be lacking here. With a red hot box office, you would think this would have garnered more attention, but people stayed away. Those who did see it were not at all impressed, so this one will leave theaters quickly.

Tim Briody: I like Seth MacFarlane. But I don't think the general audience wants Seth MacFarlane. They want Peter, Stewie or even Brian Griffin (even though Brian is his normal voice). They want Ted. He had a blank check to make whatever he wanted and this is what he came up with. Points for trying, but sorry, Seth, they don't want you. They want your characters.

Max Braden: Ted looked like a stoner comedy that appealed to frat guys. A Million Ways to Die looked like a 1 a.m. throwaway skit on Saturday Night Live. I think this is a case where the audience is instinctively suspicious that the trailer is hiding something in the movie, and that something is not good. That said, I still want to see it. I keep looking at it as a raunchy version of Sam Raimi's The Quick and the Dead.

David Mumpower: Speaking as someone who enjoyed Ted quite a bit but likes American Dad more than Family Guy, I have mixed emotions about the humor of Seth MacFarlane. He seems to be satisfied with a low signal to noise ratio on his rapidfire jokes. Oddly, that worked well with regards to The Oscars (I thought he was great), but I am not surprised to see a gamble like A Million Ways to Die in the West blow up in his face. Since the first moment I saw the trailer for this, I have been predicting a bomb. Frankly, I think that $16.8 million is not even a worst case scenario for such a terrible, terrible, terrible to the nth degree looking movie. A lot of MacFarlane’s fans gave him the benefit of the doubt here. Let’s all bow our heads in a moment of silence for those unfortunate bastards.

Kim Hollis: I’m also pretty surprised it managed even $16.8 million. There was absolutely nothing funny in the trailers and previews – and after people saw the movie, they were almost universally saying that all the funny bits were in the previews. I’m not necessarily a MacFarlane fan (Family Guy is annoying to me, though I enjoy American Dad when it’s not overly gross and scattershot and thought Ted was funny overall), but I think it was a reach to think that anyone outside of his dedicated fan base would give this movie a shot based on what the marketing showed. And now that most of them have probably seen the film, I see no reason A Million Ways to Die in the West hangs around for any amount of time, either.

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