The penultimate week for our Fantasy Movie League fall season has passed.
Also, “penultimate” is one of those words I use whenever I have the opportunity.
With one final set of picks for week 13 yet to go, now would be a good time to think about joining our league for the winter season. Clicking on this link will send you on your way. I was wondering whether or not to keep going with this, but we have Star Wars: The Last Jedi coming up, which should be a wonderfully budget distorting venture. Pricing for a weekend when the top movie is expected to bring in $250 million should be interesting.
But that is all in the future. First we need to review what happened on week twelve, the week of Justice League’s launch, which saw the pricing as follows:
Justice League - FRI $636 Justice League - SAT $434 Justice League - SUN $334 Thor: Ragnarok $269 Daddy's Home 2 $175 Murder on the Orient Express $152 Wonder $140 The Star $120 Bad Moms Christmas $77 Lady Bird $30 Jigsaw $16 Boo! 2 $9 Geostorm $8 Blade Runner 2049 $8 Three Billboards $8
Monday evening, when the new week is unlocked, I immediately do a quick, gut level pick without doing any research whatsoever on the theory that it will get one of my bad ideas of of my head quickly.
This time around I anchored on two screens of Justice League Sunday and filled in from there. Then I started poking around and decided that Justice League was not going to be the pick for the week. Pricing was based on it doing something close to $150 million but by Tuesday there were already murmurs about that being optimistic.
Based on the pricing and initial predictions, The Star looked to be a good bet for the best price-performer for the week, but I wasn’t buying that either. Stuck for choice I redid my picks anchored on three screens of Thor: Ragnarok and then played with options for the back fill as the week went on.
By late on Thursday projections for The Star had begun to wane, Justice League was under $125 million, and I was sitting there with Thor and Blade Runner 2049 wondering if I should stick with that. Box Office Pro, one of the sites I watch… in part because they do weekly projections and in part because they don’t post a hundred things a day like the Variety movie section can… popped up with their forecast, which had Wonder at $17 million, up from a modest $12 million earlier in the week.
I put that in my spreadsheet and it looked to be the clear pick for best price performer. I took that as a sign and went in with seven screens of Wonder, leaving a screen of Blade Runner 2049 there, more a pick from the heart than from logic. After that I was busy and didn’t have time to follow up until after the picks were locked on Friday morning.
My Fall Week Twelve Picks
Looking at the MCats league, I was clearly not the only one who saw the swell Wonder was getting. Of seven active players, six of us went heavy on Wonder. Over on the TAGN league however, only Pak and I were in on Wonder, with Justice League taking the anchor spots for four players and Thor for another.
And then Saturday rolled in and, for once it was not the Saturday of false hope, as Wonder was projected to hit $27 million. At that level nothing else was poised to touch it and the only real question was what film was required in that eighth screen for the perfect pick of the week.
Well, it wasn’t going to be Blade Runner 2049, which was running at about half of the best estimate I could find for it. Three Billboards was the right filler instead, giving a perfect pick worth just shy of $213 million. 906 people got that, including four of the MCats league.
Fall Week Twelve Perfect Pick
Still, even without the perfect pick, anchoring on Wonder was going to lift me up against SynCaine. Last week his Daddy’s Home 2 lineup killed, a situation helped by my bad-in-hindsight Geostorm heavy lineup. That put him $23 million ahead of me. Then we got the results for week twelve.
- Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex (M) – $212,937,228
- Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre (M) – $212,937,228
- Elly’s Elemental E-Plex (M) – $212,937,228
- Ben’s X-Wing Express (M) – $212,937,228
- Paks’ Pancakes & Pics (T) – $207,916,834
- Wilhelm’s Films from New Eden – $207,461,101
- Dan’s Decadent Decaplex (M) – $192,196,924
- Logan’s Luxurious Thaumatrope (M) – $90,471,789
- The Filthy Fleapit (T) – $80,640,147
- SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights (T) – $77,851,048
- I HAS MOVIES (T) – $75,091,163
- Kraut Screens (T) – $66,355,138
- Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex (T) – $72,529,183
- TAGN Movie Obsession – players from it marked with a (T)
- MCats Multiplex – players from it marked with an (M)
There was a four-way tie for first this week, which meant not a lot of movement. The only one assailing Corr was Aure and they maintained their gap.
Otherwise, people who bet heavy on Wonder had a six figure week and those that did not were stuck in the five figure zone, leaving Meta League season totals looking like this:
- Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex (M) – $1,123,167,684
- Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre (M) – $1,102,712,428
- Elly’s Elemental E-Plex (M) – $1,071,866,235
- Ben’s X-Wing Express (M) – $1,066,965,208*
- Wilhelm’s Films from New Eden – $1,042,078,034
- Dan’s Decadent Decaplex (M) – $1,011,641,542
- Paks’ Pancakes & Pics (T) – $1,013,838,980
- SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights (T) – $934,914,714
- Logan’s Luxurious Thaumatrope (M) – $885,263,260
- Kraut Screens (T) – $794,711,809
- The Filthy Fleapit (T) – $782,619,999
- I HAS MOVIES (T) – $773,187,860
- Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex (T) – $628,140,520
So Corr seems pretty secure in first place, and Aure in second. The third place battle is now between Elly and Ben, while I seem to be in the gap between fourth and sixth. And SynCaine, who was in the race for third spot last week fell back to eighth place due to Wonder paying off so big.
That leaves us with once week left in the fall season, with the following choices:
Coco $716 Justice League $534 Wonder $298 Thor: Ragnarok $206 Daddy's Home 2 $143 Murder on the Orient Express $128 Roman J. Israel, Esq. $102 The Star $96 Bad Moms Christmas $70 The Man Who Invented Christmas $68 Three Billboards $51 Lady Bird $49 Jigsaw $7 Loving Vincent $6 Blade Runner 2049 $6
Leading the pack is Coco, from Disney/Pixar. It already had a huge opening in Mexico, we shall see if Pixar magic continues north of the boarder. Justice League is here for its second week and ought to be worth north of $40 million. Thor is still in play as well. Then there is the week 12 ringer, Wonder, now priced more appropriately. Also new to the list this week are Roman J. Israel, Esq., The Man Who Invented Christmas, and Loving Vincent. And I still have one more week to put Blade Runner 2049 in my picks.
As I write this on Monday night, I couldn’t tell you which way to jump, but my current anchor is Coco.
Finally, as noted above, I will be carrying on for the Winter season. Click here to join. We shall see what Star Wars does to the league.
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