Week ten of our Fall Fantasy Movie League is in the past as we head straight into the teeth of the holiday season in the US.
For week ten the lineup looked like this:
The Grinch $800 Bohemian Rhapsody $372 The Girl in the Spider's Web $150 The Nutcracker $126 Overlord $107 A Star is Born $100 Nobody's Fool $80 Venom $65 Halloween $59 Thugs of Hindostan $40 Goosebumps 2 $22 The Hate U Give $25 Smallfoot $26 Hunter Killer $25 Can You Ever Forgive Me? $21
The Grinch was pretty much a dead-on lock to lead the three day box office. The question was whether it would lead the pack by enough to justify the $800 price, or if some combo of cheaper titles would be better suited the task.
As I tend to do, I got fixated on the anchor and ignore the filler aspect of my lineup. I played with variations of Bohemian Rhapsody, The Girl in the Spider’s Web, and The Nutcracker, but none of those played out in my simulations well enough to be worth the effort.
So by Friday morning I was still sitting on my Monday Hot Takes pick of 1x The Grinch, 1x Venom, 1x The Hate U Give, and 4x Goosebumps 2. I wasn’t in love with that pick, but I couldn’t come up with a list.
In chat, less than an hour before the leagues locked, Corr and Ben were talking about going all in with 8x Overlord on the assumption that it would be best performer for the week. That was interesting, but left a lot of budget on the table, Overlord not being priced high enough to be an anchor pick.
I played around with a lineup anchored on Bohemian Rhapsody, with 5x Overlord, and two more filler, and even left that lineup in the Seasonal Showdown league, where I often leave my experiments just to see how they play out. If only I had copied that to all my other leagues.
But I did not. On Saturday, when The Hate U Give looked to be up for best performer, it wasn’t a big deal. But on Sunday Overlord took that spot and kept it through the final numbers, with the perfect pick being Bohemian Rhapsody, with 5x Overlord, 1x Venom, and 1x The Hate U Give.
That left the top ten for the week looking like this:
- Goat Water Picture Palace – $104,178,849
- Paks’ Pancakes & Pics – $98,635,588
- Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – $97,616,864
- Ben’s X-Wing Express – $97,616,864
- grannanj’s Cineplex – $94,467,870
- Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – $82,810,191
- Too Orangey For Crows – $82,360,647
- SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $81,142,765
- Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $81,105,889
- Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $80,030,515
Goat got the perfect pick this week, while Pak was not too far behind with a lineup that had Smallfoot rather than The Hate U Give. Corr and Ben took the next two spots with their all-in Overlord picks.
I did not make the top ten cut again this week, sitting at 11th place about two million behind Darren.
That left the overall season scores looking like this:
- Goat Water Picture Palace – $747,092,730
- Wilhelm’s Kul Tiras Kino – $735,363,014
- Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – $719,810,825
- Too Orangey For Crows – $712,594,660
- I HAS BAD TASTE – $700,102,116
- Ben’s X-Wing Express – $690,847,847
- grannanj’s Cineplex – $678,310,666
- Paks’ Pancakes & Pics – $669,436,834
- Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $668,739,930
- Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $665,921,504
Goat’s strong finish jumped him past me into first place by $12 million.
The alternate scoring scheme showed its volatility this week though.
- Goat Water Picture Palace – 58
- Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex- 55
- Wilhelm’s Kul Tiras Kino – 49
- Too Orangey For Crows – 48
- Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – 41
- I HAS BAD TASTE – 37
- Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – 35
- Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – 35
- Paks’ Pancakes & Pics – 32
- Ben’s X-Wing Express – 30
Not getting anything for the alternate scoring this week, Goat and Corr passed me while Bhagpuss caught right up. Ben and Pak also climbed into the top ten, knocking Cyanbane (28 points) and SynCaine (27 points) into into 11th and 12th spots respectively.
So there it stands, with three weeks left to go it is still an open fight for first place with both scoring schemes.
That leads us to week eleven, where the choices will be:
Fantastic Beasts 2 $699 The Grinch $387 Bohemian Rhapsody $203 Instant Family $180 Windows $167 A Star is Born $55 The Nutcracker $54 Overlord $49 Nobody's Fool $36 The Girl in the Spider's Web $36 Venom $27 Boy Erased $19 Halloween $14 The Hate U Give $12 Can You Ever Forgive Me? $12
Dropping off the list this week are Smallfoot, Goosebumps 2 , Hunter Killer, and Thugs of Hindostan.
Replacing them are Fantastic Beasts 2, Instant Family, Window, and Boy Erased.
Fantastic Beasts 2, or Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald to get out the full name… at least they dropped the “and Where to Find Them” part… is the big deal this week. Harry Potter movies apparently do pretty well, even without Harry Potter around, though the Harry Potter movies based on actual books in our world are still significantly more popular than Harry Potter movies based on fictional books mentioned in passing within the actual books.
Or something.
It will still make its money back, but likely won’t be a crazy box office. The first Fantastic Beasts did $74 million its opening weekend and long range forecasts have the sequel hitting $70 million. I don’t see any reason to dispute that. It will be in a theater near you and everybody you know.
Instant Family. It stars Mark Wahlberg. I’m not saying Marky Mark hasn’t done some good work, but he has also signed on for more than his share of disappointing productions and cringe worthy cardboard cut-out characters. Also I think the premise of the film was lifted directly from 90s sitcom Horsin’ Around, making it the second rip-off of the show after Mr. Peanutbutter’s House. It is currently pegged at $18 million for the weekend. We shall see.
Windows was a tough one. Googling “Windows” gets you Microsoft, while “Windows film” gets you tinting options for your home and car. There is no Wikipedia article on it yet, so I had to go to the IMDB… and even that steered me to a 1950’s TV series, a 1980’s movie, and the 2014 film Open Windows before I could finally pin it down. Not an auspicious sign.
Eventually though I found it, though I am still not sure I get what the movie is about. But it does have a few big names in it like Liam Neeson, Viola Davis, Robert Duvall, and Colin Farrell. The forecast for it currently stands at about $16 million, putting it close to Instant Family.
And finally there is Boy Erased, which is coming up on its third week in theaters, but which is getting an expansion of venues I assume. It is the story of Baptist parents sending their son to gay conversion therapy. I haven’t seen a forecast for it yet, but given its pricing it would seem to be set for around $2 million maybe.
So there we go.
For the Monday Hot Takes League the Cineplex Builder is giving me 1x Fantastic Beasts, 1x Bohemian Rhapsody, 1x Nobody’s Fool, 1x Halloween, and 4x The Hate U Give. But given how it fared for me last week, I will be doing more research before I commit for Friday.
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