Week three was up for the fall Fantasy Movie League.
After a week where which day of It was all that mattered in your picks… and woe to those who went with Friday like I did or, worse, went with Home Again… we were back to a world with some interesting choices to make. The line up looked like:
It $799 American Assassin $167 Mother! $143 Home Again $75 Hitman's Bodyguard $41 Annabelle $32 Wind River $27 Leap! $25 Spider-Man $18 Dunkirk $16 Luck Logan $14 Emoji Movie $10 Despicable Me 3 $9 Girls Trip $7 Best of the Rest $7
It was clearly going to rule the box office roost again, but pricing meant that you could choose It and some cheap films, or you could gamble on whether or not a pile of screens running American Assassin or Mother! would outweigh the single screen of clown horror. (Also, screw movie names that are pronouns.)
My Monday evening gut pick was anchored on It largely because I knew it was going to pull in at least $50 million, and probably closer to $60 million, before anybody published estimates.
Estimates were slow and I don’t recall seeing anything firm until Thursday morning, at which point Mother! seemed out of the running, but American Assassin was predicted to be somewhere in the $12.5 million to $15 million range. At the high end of that range the five screens you could get would be enough to make it a worthwhile bet against It.
So I swapped to five screens of American Assassin and then dropped in Mother!, Lucky Logan, and Best of the Rest to fill out the lineup.
My Fall Week Three Picks
I hindsight I should have gone with two Best of the Rest just based on what I said last week. Best of the Rest tends to be the best price/performer when it shows up, something which occurred again this week. That would have given me $2.7 million rather than $996K for Lucky Logan. Ah well. I will try to remember that for next time.
When the picks were in and locked on Friday morning there was a spread of choices among the Meta League. Most people were in for five screens of American Assassin, though some were in for four or three screens, and four people were anchored on a screen of It.
In the end, the perfect pick wasn’t in any of our theaters. Yes, five screens of American Assassin was the right anchor, but then you needed to screens of the suddenly not-so-bad Home Again and a screen of Best of the Rest, which turned out to be Dark Tower, so two Stephen King movies, one at each end of the top 15.
Fall Week Three Perfect Pick
That netted out to about $92.5 million with the perfect pick bonus. 74 people managed to get that pick. But it didn’t go too bad for the rest of us. Those heavy on American Assassin were at the top, where variations in the other three screens accounted for the minor gaps, but if you anchored on It you weren’t too far behind. Hedging on American Assassin cost though. The results for the week were:
- Paks’ Pancakes & Pics (T) – $87,434,193
- Ben’s X-Wing Express (M) – $85,746,474
- Wilhelm’s Films from New Eden – $85,672,954
- Elly’s Elemental E-Plex (M) – $83,921,075
- The Filthy Fleapit (T) – $83,632,973
- Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex (M) – $83,485,864
- Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre (M) – $83,285,598
- Dan’s Decadent Decaplex (M) – $80,239,128
- I HAS MOVIES (T) – $79,745,592
- SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights (T) – $79,701,949
- Ocho’s Octoplex (L) – $77,328,839
- Logan’s Luxurious Thaumatrope (M) – $77,030,257
- Kraut Screens (T) – $73,395,633
- Bel’s House of Horrors (L) – $1,227,888 (didn’t pick, 4 empty screens)
A $14 million spread from top to bottom, not counting Bel, isn’t that wide, and the top half is within about a $4 million bracket.
That meant that nobody fell too far behind, but that nobody caught up or gained much of a lead either. So the rankings for the season didn’t see any drastic changed over the previous week.
- Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex (M) – $271,686,516
- SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights (T) – $266,479,296
- Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre (M) – $264,464,743
- Wilhelm’s Films from New Eden – $258,563,957
- Ben’s X-Wing Express (M) – $255,766,938
- Ocho’s Octoplex (L) – $252,612,323
- Elly’s Elemental E-Plex (M) – $250,763,302
- Logan’s Luxurious Thaumatrope (M) – $249,025,449
- Dan’s Decadent Decaplex (M) – $245,971,521
- Paks’ Pancakes & Pics (T) – $197,384,020
- I HAS MOVIES (T) – $192,391,460
- The Filthy Fleapit (T) – $171,866,588
- Bel’s House of Horrors (L) – $157,884,588
- Kraut Screens (T) – $150,063,804
A bit of shuffling there, but nothing drastic. Those who started on week two… or who forgot to pick… or who has a really bad week last week… are clustered towards the bottom.
And now we face week four of the season with a few new titles on the list.
Kingsman: Golden Circle $511 LEGO Ninjago Movie $389 It $352 American Assassin $68 Friend Request $66 Mother! $34 Home Again $32 Brad's Status $22 Hitman's Bodyguard $19 Wind River $15 Leap! $13 Annabelle Creation $12 Spider-Man $11 Battle of the Sexes $8 Dunkirk $7
For new options Kingsman tops the list with the LEGO Ninjago Movie not far behind. Then there is Friend Request and Brad’s Status tucked in mid-pack with Battle of the Sexes down near the bottom. That is five new movies in the mix.
I have no feel for Kingsman. The few people I know who saw the original didn’t like it. But it did really well and there is some Hollywood rule about sequels being good for 80% of the original even if they don’t bring much new to the table. So maybe 80% of the original’s $36 million as a starting point estimate? Then again it is being heavily advertised and it being released in a different season… but it is also rated R… so who knows?
While I am not a fan of the LEGO Ninjago IP, I did love The LEGO Movie and the LEGO Batman Movie, and this is a kids film during a week when the other contenders for the under age demographic are pretty stale. So unless I see a big red flag between now and Friday morning, I will likely be in on the LEGO Ninjago Movie as my anchor. Better two of those than one Kingsman I think.
And then there is It, which did $60 million last week, so even if it drops by 50%, a likely amount, it will still be in around the $30 million mark, making a very viable third choice for an anchor.
Then we get into the filler options to back up the anchor, and there are a lot of options. I feel like Battle of the Sexes is way under priced… it has Emma Stone and Steve Carell in it for Pete’s sake… though I haven’t seen how many screens it will be on. It might be an art house film that only appeals to me because I am old enough to remember the events on which it was based… and the episode of The Odd Couple came from it. [Addendum: Since I wrote this I saw on Box Office Mojo that it is only slated for 20 screens. So, yeah.]
Anyway, that is where we stand on the gateway to week four.
No comments:
Post a Comment