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Kim Hollis: When the Game Stands Tall, a faith-based sports film from Sony, earned $8.4 million this weekend. What do you think of this result?

Jason Barney: This is a very respectable result. It is a new film, and only opened in fifth place, but I don't think this was ever intended to compete at a higher level. Earning $8 million with a budget of $15 million...those are great numbers. Even though this is an under-the-radar type opener, you have to wonder if part of the plan was to get a little attention at the start of the NFL and college football seasons. Such a scheduling move might have a slight impact and positively effect the drop offs for a couple of weeks. Sony put money into a project that will make them money.

Edwin Davies: The most notable thing about this result to me is that the film is a faith-based project, something which I was completely unaware of going in to the weekend. I've seen the trailer quite a few times recently playing before other films, and at no point did they suggest that it was anything other than a fairly standard high school sports movie. In that respect, it reminds me of Moms' Night Out; both were genre films intended to appeal to a faith-based audience which didn't oversell that aspect, to the extent that it didn't feature in the ads at all and seems confined to more grass roots efforts, and that might have prevented them from doing better by failing to fire up that audience. As it is, though, this is pretty solid given the low budget.

Bruce Hall: I think that faith based films are (ironically) not unlike the horror genre in that there's a dedicated base willing to pass on word-of-mouth on a grassroots level for something that's meaningful to them. Those people are going to show up every time. And even if they don't, chances are you'll at least break even. Keeping the budget modest helps maximize your potential profit.

But getting the word out to the non-initiated is key to broadening your appeal. We could be seeing a trend emerging in the "faith based" genre where the tone of the advertisement is tailored specifically to the individual audience, rather than presented in an aggressive an uncompromising matter.

If word of this gets out, it could revolutionize advertising.

Felix Quinonez: I think it's just fine. It won't lose any money and it has a chance to eke out some profit. It won't make anyone's career but no one will walk away hurt by it either.

David Mumpower: I do think that the idea of a mash-up between faith-based cinema and upbeat sports movies is a good idea in theory. We actually already knew this from an obscure example, Facing the Giants. The Sherwood Pictures release earned $10.2 million worldwide against a $100,000 budget, and it was also a solid performer on home video. When the Game Stands Tall is going to be a profitable endeavor since the financial outlay was frugal at $15 million.

I still cannot describe this movie as a hit based on the opening weekend performance, though. A Jim Caviezel sports movie with religious overtones should be a license to print money. After all, the mother of all faith-based blockbusters is The Passion of the Christ, which was Caviezel's most memorable performance prior to his work on Person of Interest. Simply reminding potential consumers of this tie-in plus their love of football should have been enough to guarantee big business. After all, the Bible Belt and the Southeastern Conference are the same thing. God and football plays well in the south. When the Game Stands Tall has missed out on a ton of money in terms of opportunity cost by not being a good movie. That is the underlying theme of the summer box office campaign. Few films have bombed, yet a lot of profitable endeavors earned least case scenario revenue.

Kim Hollis: It's an okay result given the budget, but I feel like some money was left on the table here. Several people mentioned that they didn't realize this was a faith-based project, and neither did I prior to this weekend. I'd seen a trailer and some ads, but none of them indicated to me that it necessarily fit that demographic. Similarly, living in the Bible Belt as I do, I've seen a lot of friends/acquaintances excitedly discussing some of this year's earlier films like God's Not Dead and Heaven Is for Real. But not a one of them ever discussed Moms' Night Out or When the Game Stands Tall. I wonder if there would have been more interest if it had been marketed better to that specific demographic.

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