In which a gamble does not pay off.
This week the third reboot of Spider-Man in recent memory hit screens in the United States, dominating the box office.
With Spider-Man expected to top $100 million and no other serious contenders on the bill, the FML team made things interesting by splitting up the box office results for the web-slinger into Friday, Saturday, and Sunday options. The pricing for the week was:
Spider-Man FRIDAY $501 Spider-Man SATURDAY $448 Despicable Me 3 $404 Spider-Man SUNDAY $339 Baby Driver $143 Wonder Woman $104 Transformers $70 Cars 3 $47 The House $46 47 Meters Down $30 The Big Sick $28 The Beguiled $21 The Mummy $14 Pirates $13 Guardians of the Galaxy 2 $8
You couldn’t get all of the Spider-Man box office, though you could get some pairings of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
I stared off with my picks trying to decide between Spider-Man on Friday and Sunday or doubling up on Saturday. But as I dabbled with my spreadsheet and looked at various predictions, I noticed that Baby Driver might be an option.
While the price had been bumped up from week five, when all-in with Baby Driver was the perfect pick, it still seemed to have potential. I could no longer get it on eight screens, but if predictions of it hitting $15 million on its second week out it seemed likely to be the best price/performance title of the week again, which would grant it another $2 million per screen. $17 million times six screens would give Spider-Man a run for its money, since it was sliced up into three picks.
So I decided to roll the dice and went with six screens of Baby Driver and two screens of Transformers.
However, Baby Driver ended up not having $15 million in box office in it for its second week.
Baby Driver dominated my week six picks
$13 million wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t enough to get the bonus. Instead, the bonus went to The Big Sick. While it only only cleared $3.6 million at the box office, the bonus plus the right Spider-Man picks were enough to pull way ahead of my Baby Driver plan.
The perfect pick for the week, which 324 people went with, was Spider-Man on Friday and Sunday, five screens of The Big Sick, and Pirates of the Caribbean, a selection good for $114 million.
The Week Six Perfect Pick
The good news… for everybody besides Liore… was that Liore did not have the perfect pick.
The bad news… again, for all but Liore… was that she missed the perfect pick by a single screen, going with The Mummy instead of Pirates. That was enough to make her far and away the winner for the week. The week six scores were:
- Dr Liore’s Evil House of Pancakes – $109,051,414
- Murf’s Matinee Mania – $97,942,099
- Braxwolf’s Waffleplex – $97,825,990
- Bel’s House of Horrors – $94,559,299
- Moderate Peril’s Sleazy Porno Theatre – $92,986,346
- Wilhelm’s Clockwork Lemon Multiplex – $90,769,482
- Syl’s Fantasy Galore Panopticum – $87,981,801
- Pasduil’s Popcorn Picturehouse – $87,783,408
- Ocho’s Octoplex – $87,724,019
- Void’s Awesomeplex – $83,549,342
Liore was $11 million ahead of second place for the week. But the win had even more impact on the overall season standings.
- Dr Liore’s Evil House of Pancakes – $710,750,595
- Wilhelm’s Clockwork Lemon Multiplex – $666,781,705
- Ocho’s Octoplex – $619,683,659
- Void’s Awesomeplex – $594,470,061
- Moderate Peril’s Sleazy Porno Theatre – $574,929,942
- Pasduil’s Popcorn Picturehouse – $559,255,453
- Murf’s Matinee Mania – $552,400,538
- Bel’s House of Horrors – $544,825,221
- Braxwolf’s Waffleplex – $539,791,244
- Syl’s Fantasy Galore Panopticum – $492,373,061
The actual ranking order did not change compared to the previous week. What did change was the extent of Liore’s lead. She jumped ahead from being a little over $25 million out in front of second place to nearly a $46 million lead, a gap that went from “insurmountable unless she stumbles” to “could probably roll with her week six picks for a few weeks and still win easily.”
My Baby Driver plan was solidly mid-pack, so I am still secure in second place, but first place is just a distant spark on the horizon from where I stand.
In our home league, my wife got her first weekly win, rolling past $100 million for the week, trouncing my daughter and I and our Baby Driver fixation.
And so we come to week seven and the second half of the season. Spiders and Apes are battling for week seven, with the list of options looking like this:
Planet of the Apes $705 Spider-Man $586 Despicable Me 3 $201 The Big Sick $143 Baby Driver $93 Wish Upon $92 Wonder Woman $68 Cars 3 $33 Transformers $30 The House $26 47 Meters Down $17 The Beguiled $12 Pirates $6 The Mummy $5 Best of the Rest $5
Spider-Man is down to a single pick, but you can still only get him on one screen. Planet of the Apes is estimated to bring in more than $50 million currently.
There are also enough low estimate movies in play that the Best of the Rest wild car is in play for week seven as well.
I am not sure what I will go with this week yet… I am usually not sure until Thursday night… but I probably won’t be all in on Baby Driver again. With the current estimates it looks like Wish Upon is a likely candidate for best price/performance, so expect to see that on a lot of picks. But if Baby Driver could just pull out $9 million though… hrmm…
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