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David Mumpower: Adam Sandler's career has fallen and it can't get up. Pixels is the most commercial (non-animated) thing he's done in ages, and people still soundly rejected it. I thought the teaser opened the door to a redemptive blockbuster. Then, the full trailer showed at least some comic potential. As release approached, people seemed gleeful about treating Pixels like a pinata, and then there was that other theater incident that didn't help matters. In the end, Pixels has bombed domestically, and it's going to need a sturdy international run to counteract the stink of failure here. It's a shame, because this premise killed on Futurama. It should have worked as a movie.

Kim Hollis: How much impact do you think Thursday night's movie theater shootings had on the weekend?

Ben Gruchow: My heart stopped when I got the initial notice on my CNN app, which basically just said that police had been called to the scene of a shooting in a movie theater; it got a bit of a relief when an update noted injuries but no deaths (save for the gunman himself), and then the reports that some of the injured had died started to come in. I think that it's an easy and understandable thing to get frightened of putting yourself at risk when it's just you going to the theater; by putting myself in the headspace of a parent who was planning on taking their child to see Pixels or allowing their teenager to go out and see Paper Towns, I'm honestly surprised the numbers this weekend weren't lower.

I remember something that was said on BOP a few years ago with The Dark Knight Rises, about not letting fear control your actions. The only film I saw this weekend was Paper Towns, and sitting in the theater, did the thought cross my mind that something like this could happen? Of course it did. Unfortunately, we are in an environment where it could also happen next weekend, or the weekend after, or the weekend after that. The alternative, of not going to the theater ever again, shows the people who have the urge to commit these actions that they've won or they'll win. But that's me, and my own headspace...and I don't have children. If I did, I can't guarantee that it wouldn't have had an impact on my decision.

Edwin Davies: It probably had some effect, but the comparatively smaller nature of the crime compared to the Aurora one - and the fact that we all have the memory of that one in our minds so it is less shocking, if not less horrifying - probably made it have less of an impact than the 2012 shooting. I'm sure that some people decided not to go to the theater this weekend as a result of the shooting, but it was presented as such an isolated incident that it probably wasn't a huge number.

Jason Barney: It had a negative effect, but I am not sure how much. It is sad and when I heard the news I thought back to Batman and thought, "Not again". Well, it happened again. A guy killing people at a venue where friends and family want to be entertained? I'm sure that skewed the numbers lower for the weekend.

Michael Lynderey: This is not definitive evidence, but the film at which the shooting occurred, Trainwreck, dropped only 42.6%, much lower than Ant-Man's 56.5% and even lower than Minions. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think Trainwreck was the film most likely to have been effected by the shooting. Since it doesn't look like it has been, perhaps we can surmise that the other films' box office didn't change all that much, either. It's sad that we have to have this conversation again, though.

David Mumpower: While the points here are well taken, I think we should mention that Trainwreck dropping 42.6% is much worse than prior Apatow films. The 40-Year-Old Virgin fell 24%, Knocked Up declined 36%, and This Is 40 gained 8%. Funny People is the exception since it dropped 65%, but the point remains that Apatow films largely don't fall a lot in their second weekends. There's a tricky aspect to gauging Trainwreck relative to The Dark Knight Rises in that one could only suffer from the negative attention while the other may even benefit from the media attention. I for one strongly considered going to see the film even though I have no interest in it simply because I wanted to perform an act of defiance. My indifference to Amy Schumer is what stopped me. For these reasons, I consider what Trainwreck did a bit of a false signal overall.

The conclusion I draw is something Ben mentioned above. It reinforces other conversations I've had with BOP staff members since last Thursday. No matter how much we movie lovers don't want the psychos to carry the day, it's impossible to sit in the theater without thinking about it some. While I don't think it's as devastating a turn of events as Aurora due to the combination of much weaker films and a less heavily saturated media cycle, I absolutely believe that the major new releases, Paper Towns and Pixels, both suffered. Nobody feels good about taking their children or letting their teenagers go to the movies right after something like this. We'll see if it shows in the legs any, although the aforementioned stink of failure with Pixels limits its hope there.

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