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In 2013, four movies broke through the $300 million barrier and four more earned more than what Lego Movie or Captain America have done so far - $256 million. Thirteen movies made over $200 million last year. To this point this year, only three have cracked that level of support although another three are closing in. This year vs last year shows the numbers are down. A reminder...there has not been a $300 million earner yet THIS YEAR.

In 2012, five movies vaulted over $300 million and another six made it over $200 million.

We may be looking at another year like 2011 when the higher end of the box office numbers were pretty soft. I know it is not fair to judge years or box office performance just based on the top earners, but 2014 just doesn't appear to have many "big" films domestically.

Max Braden: The top story for me is how far Godzilla fell. For the past six months or year I think that Godzilla's trailers were making people think it was *the* movie to see this summer. Based on advance buzz, Godzilla should have crushed Captain America but it's not even close.

David Mumpower: First of all, I am diametrically opposed to Max on the subject of Godzilla’s performance. It is a blockbuster domestically before we even consider its superlative overseas performance. I suspect his dislike of the quality of the movie, another point of disagreement between us, is impacting his box office analysis.

For me, the story of the summer to date has been the power of the openers. When we first debuted BOP in 2001, there was a historic streak of $50+ million openers at a time when that was a historic level for opening weekends. What was remarkable that summer was the consistency of films opening to that level. In 2014, we had witnessed something similar prior to this past weekend.

Starting with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 the first week of May, all of the number one films were splendid performers. All six of them opened to at least $48 million, half of those virtually doubling that total at $90+ million. The average number one film for the first seven weeks of this summer was $71.3 million. These number one films of the summer grossed almost exactly half a billion on opening weekend. Frankly, I feel like there is nowhere to go but down from here because all of the heavyweights have excelled thus far.

Equally impressive is that Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return is the only unqualified bomb during the summer thus far. There have been some disappointments such as A Million Ways to Die in the West and Blended. Both of those films have effectively matched their budgets in terms of domestic box office, though. Since Transcendence in April, every movie that had a chance to be successful has at least performed acceptably. That basically never happens.

Kim Hollis: For me, the thing that really stands out this summer is the lack of staying power after opening weekend. In the past, we’ve seen a lot of films fall precipitously in weekend two and then recover, but that really hasn’t happened this summer. Most openers, with the key exception of Maleficent, have front-loaded their box office into their first three days. This is an emerging behavior that I think we’re going to want to continue to track.

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