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Jason Barney: This is a remarkable opening weekend, and based on the amount of press the film is garnering, it probably will end up as an Oscar Contender. That discussion has a few months to pan out, but perhaps Gone Girl will be in the mix.

As for the performance of the film, this is a crazy strong opening that ensures a lot of money is going to get made. A $38 million start against a $60 million budget is the kind of math studios dream of. It will equal its budget around Saturday of next week, and it should be able to eat into marketing costs pretty quickly. It already has brought in some coin from overseas, so anyone and everyone involved has to be happy - especially since tracking had it coming out of the gate in the mid $20s. This is a great start.

Kim Hollis: Gone Girl's debut was almost exactly where I expected it to be. Since it's based on a popular novel and has strong leads and a great marketing push, the project was handled nearly perfectly. With regards to its Oscar prospects, I'd agree that it has a pretty strong chance at showing up if the field of Best Picture nominees is wide. It's a film that is doing a lot more than it seems on a surface viewing, and that kind of nuance is something I think will be appreciated as the film gets discussed more. I just don't know how I'll react if Rosamund Pike gets nominated (and I think there's a strong chance she does). She's just been so terrible in so many things up to now.

David Mumpower: Gone Girl’s debut is unsurprising in that it has a better pedigree than another recent Fincher adaptation, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Affleck is a bigger star than Daniel Craig, and the concept of Gone Girl is more marketable, at least before word spreads regarding its actual nature. Dragon Tattoo earned $102.5 million in 2011, and Gone Girl is right on track to exceed or at least match that performance. To a larger point, Gone Girl feels topical for the current social-media obsessed society in which we live.

An unrelated point we have yet to address is the growing importance of branding with regards to cinematic adaptations. This year alone, titles such as The Fault in Our Stars, The Maze Runner and now Gone Girl have translated their Amazon popularity into solid to spectacular box office runs. Novel buzz doesn’t always guarantee a hit movie, but it has been a hugely successful process this year.

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