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David Mumpower: I fall between Kim and everyone else. I think that it has the type of concept that could sell tickets...if it were good. De Niro and Efron in a buddy picture is a fairly decent idea. Studios have had success in letting De Niro give the rub to younger actors like Ben Stiller and Bradley Cooper. What failed here is that they couldn't provide a trailer with any significant laughs in it. Had the movie been at least good enough to market effectively, it would have earned quite a bit more. So, people are right that given its quality, it's an acceptable performance. The opportunity cost loss is that the filmmakers failed in the most basic task. We live in an age where people sniff out garbage product far too quickly for exhibitors to overcome that obstacle.

Kim Hollis: The Boy, a horror film from upstart distributor STX, earned $10.8 million in its debut weekend. What do you think of this result?

Jason Barney: Even though cheep horror doesn't get a lot of credit at the box office, this is going to be a clear success pretty quickly. The Boy may only have a 29% rating at RT, have opened in fifth place in a relatively low earning weekend, and will be gone very quickly, but versus the budget this is a strong opening.

The film was produced and brought to theaters for a little more than $10 million, and this opening of $11 million is a strong start. It won't be around long, but STX probably will not lose money on this one.

Ben Gruchow: Not bad, considering it's only a million or so below The Forest while being approximately (according to Rotten Tomatoes) three times better. It's well under what William Brent Bell's last "big" feature, The Devil Inside, opened to...but that one had the benefit of both timing (it was the first major release of 2012) and a marketing campaign that promised a somewhat novel approach with the exorcism thriller/found-footage concept, this before the found-footage concept was totally played out. The Boy looked far more traditional, and it also looked faintly goofy. That last shot in the trailers of the painting coming to life never elicited anything but chuckling from the audience in the times it ran before a film. I agree with Jason that it's going to dissipate pretty quickly; although the movie was better than I expected, the expectations were really pretty low to begin with.

Ryan Kyle: I could pretty much cut-and-paste the analysis I used for Dirty Grandpa here and the same rules would apply. Bad reviews. Decent opening. Low budget. Money made. Movie forgotten about in two weeks.

Kim Hollis: I'm surprised it did this well. I barely even knew it existed, and that's only because I write for this website. For STX, it'll make money by the time home video is added in. Really, the movie release is effectively an extended commercial for that eventual future.

David Mumpower: The next commercial I see for this will be the first...and I've watched a ton of television during the snowstorms. The studio had zero faith in it, and the reviews bear out that evaluation. The fact that it opened to double digits is a minor miracle.

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