Blogger Fantasy Movie League – Week Two

Week two of our Blogger Fantasy Movie League seemed to present us with two possible paths forward.

The lineup for the week looked to pit the first week’s champion, Wonder Woman, against a new contender for the box office crown, The Mummy.  The choices and prices presented to us were as follows: (Last week’s post mostly explains how this all works)

Wonder Woman              $613
The Mummy                 $526
Captain Underpants        $198
Pirates                   $143
It Comes At Night         $150
Guardians of the Galaxy 2 $70
Baywatch                  $60
Megan Leavey              $59
Everything, Everything    $28
Alien Covenant            $26
My Cousin Rachel          $15
Snatched                  $9
Best of the Rest          $9
Diary of a Wimpy Kid      $8
King Arthur               $7

And then the first reviews and the Thursday night numbers hit and it became pretty clear that The Mummy was going to do well, but not well enough to defeat Wonder Woman.  Only one person bet on The Mummy, and Braxwolf’s decision to back Tom Cruise explains his low ranking in this week’s tally.

So the real question of the week was what should the other seven screens show once you had booked Wonder Woman.

It looked like Liore, the founder of the event and the practiced ringer who will no doubt be the overall winner at the end of the 13th week, opted to put Guardians of the Galaxy 2 on five screens, with My Cousin Rachel on the remaining two, a selection that on the Saturday estimates looked to push her way out in front of the rest of us.  At that point GotG2 looked to have the best cost/performance ratio, which gets you some bonus income for each screen showing it.

My own picks were Wonder Woman, Pirates of the Caribbean on two screens, Everything Everything on two screens, and My Cousin Rachel on three screens, a lineup that spent my entire $1,000 weekly budget. (I setup a spreadsheet to figure out how to spend my whole budget under the theory that the cost reflects the estimated performance.)

My picks and their yields

The Sunday estimates came out and reeled Liore a ways back towards the pack as Wonder Woman was beating projections and took over the cost/performance crown, spreading the wealth to the rest of us who went with that pick.

Then the final results came in and the optimum result was clear.  Liore missed it by failing to pick the right two addon films after GotG.

Week Two’s Perfect Pick

But the win for the week went to Liore all the same, with the rankings for the week as follows:

1. Dr Liore’s Evil House of Pancakes – $94,019,519
2. Wilhelm’s Clockwork Lemon Multiplex – $88,088,986
3. Pasduil’s Popcorn Picturehouse – $86,983,478
4. Ocho’s Octoplex – $86,379,050
5. Void’s Awesomeplex – $85,978,667
6. Moderate Peril’s Sleazy Porno Theatre – $85,672,860
7. Murf’s Matinee Mania – $84,507,305
8. Clockwork’s Cinesplosion – $82,465,146
9. Braxwolf’s Waffleplex – $64,527,776
10. Bel’s House of Horrors – $63,772,205
11. Syl’s Fantasy Galore Panopticum – $43,155,933

Liore was out in front by a fair margin, followed again by a fairly tight pack of people who picked Wonder Woman and filled out their full lineup.

Trailing behind was Braxwolf, who dared pick The Mummy for his anchor, Belghast, who left three screens empty (which costs $2 million per screen), and Syl, who did not have time to fill our her picks so her picks from the previous week rolled forward.

That leaves the overall rankings after two weeks as:

1. Dr Liore’s Evil House of Pancakes – $239,380,552
2. Wilhelm’s Clockwork Lemon Multiplex – $207,556,000
3. Pasduil’s Popcorn Picturehouse – $205,508,040
4. Moderate Peril’s Sleazy Porno Theatre – $207,478,373
5. Ocho’s Octoplex – $203,601,637
6. Clockwork’s Cinesplosion – $202,374,647
7. Void’s Awesomeplex – $191,703,673
8. Braxwolf’s Waffleplex – $186,105,300
9. Bel’s House of Horrors – $185,218,055
10. Murf’s Matinee Mania – $163,222,265
11. Syl’s Fantasy Galore Panopticum – $129,272,381

Liore remains solidly out in front, nearly $22 million ahead of the nearest member of the main pack.  There are still 11 weeks left to go, so it is possible somebody might catch her, but she would have to really miss a major pick some week.

Now we are looking towards week three, the lineup for which is:

Cars 3                    $719
Wonder Woman              $478
All Eyez On Me            $327
Rough Night               $243
The Mummy                 $167
47 Meters Down            $105
Captain Underpants        $78
Pirates                   $71
Guardians of the Galaxy 2 $60
It Comes At Night         $34
The Book of Henry         $31
Baywatch                  $29
Megan Leavey              $25
Alien Covenant            $11
Everything, Everything    $10

Cars 3 looks to be the most likely anchor for a winning line up this week.  The trick remains what other titles best supplement that pick.  Or maybe Wonder Woman with some other picks will remain the better choice.  We shall see.