Week two of the Summer Fantasy Movie League and we get to see how the first eagerly awaited title of the season came along.
It was an interesting mix this week with a variety of anchor choices both old and new to choose from. The lineup looked like this:
Ocean's 8 $626 Hereditary $219 Solo $218 Deadpool 2 $201 Hotel Artemis $138 Avengers: Infinity War $93 Adrift $89 Book Club $67 Upgrade $32 Life of the Party $31 Breaking In $24 Overboard $16 A Quiet Place $16 Action Point $15 RBG $11
Ocean’s 8 was the big new title for the week, and while not expected to be a blockbuster, it was clearly set to top the week.
After that there was a range of options from the new slow burn horror film Hereditary, to multi-week retreads Deadpool 2 and Solo, to Hotel Artemis… which is referenced in this week’s title.
Yeah, things did not go well for Hotel Artemis this week. While priced to exceed The Avengers it in fact was much closer to Upgrade in value when the final numbers, making it about $80 over priced.
Fortunately for me, I was in no way tempted by Hotel Artemis. Likewise I was down on Solo as well. That was not going to be my anchor. Instead I was juggling around options with Ocean’s 8, Hereditary, and Deadpool 2 looking for the right mix.
As I said in last week’s post, for the Monday Hot Takes league I was in on Hereditary largely due to Liore’s enthusiasm for it. However, as the week went on my enthusiasm for the title waned and I was weighing Ocean’s 8 versus Deadpool 2. Eventually I split the difference, and for the TAGN league I anchored on Deadpool 2 while I used an Ocean’s 8 lineup in another league.
With three screens of Deadpool 2 I had enough room for four screens of The Avengers and one of Breaking In. That was my choice.
Summer Movie League – My Week One Pick
And then the perfect pick ended up being anchored on Solo.
Not that my lineup was horrible. Without bonuses it was the 7th best lineup possible. But Solo was the anchor for the top lineup, which was 2x Solo and 6x The Avengers, both with and without bonuses.
That left the scores for the week looking like this:
- Goat Water Picture Palace – $74,929,344
- Wilhelm’s Abyssal Pocket Playhouse – $72,843,102
- Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – $72,531,960
- Paks’ Pancakes & Pics – $70,582,538
- I HAS BAD TASTE – $67,754,584
- Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $67,524,560
- Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $67,243,494
- Too Orangey For Crows – $66,626,858
- Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – $65,429,411
- Biyondios! Kabuki & Cinema – $65,429,411
- SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $64,018,260
- Bean Movie Burrito – $62,986,713
- Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $62,969,256
- Ben’s X-Wing Express – $62,969,256
- Kraut Screens – $62,896,688
- grannanj’s Cineplex – $56,064,376
- aria82’s Cineplex – $55,104,817
- JHW’s Cineplex – $27,370,850
- Joanie’s Joint – $23,682,815
- Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre – $21,856,990 (did not copy picks)
- Skar’s Movies and Meat Pies – $20,978,053 (did not pick)
- DumCheese’s Cineplex – $10,480,818 (did not pick)
Goat got the perfect pick which, even without bonuses put him at the top of the list for the week, while my 7th best got me into second.
The top half of the list was a mix of picks anchored on Solo, Hereditary, Deadpool 2, and Ocean’s 8. The pricing on those was good enough to keep a variety of picks competitive in the no bonuses game.
Hotel Artemis however. Joanie’s Joint was all in on Hotel Artemis and paid the price. A tough week for Jodie Foster fans.
And then there is DumCheese. At first glance I thought he picked this week, his lineup being 2x Upgrade and 6x Action Point. It took me a bit to realize that this was his pick from last week which had rolled over. It just looked different because last week Action Point was the anchor while this week it had been devalued so much that Upgrade was worth more. Strange days.
So into the second week the overall lineup looks like this:
- Wilhelm’s Abyssal Pocket Playhouse – $145,366,336
- Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – $143,454,008
- Goat Water Picture Palace – $137,953,188
- Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – $137,479,475
- Biyondios! Kabuki & Cinema – $134,307,401
- Too Orangey For Crows – $133,531,136
- Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $132,363,247
- Paks’ Pancakes & Pics – $130,537,531
- SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $128,707,980
- Ben’s X-Wing Express – $126,171,761
- Kraut Screens – $126,047,334
- Bean Movie Burrito – $125,552,918
- I HAS BAD TASTE – $125,226,763
- Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $122,328,210
- aria82’s Cineplex – $121,483,595
- grannanj’s Cineplex – $118,611,195
- Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $111,168,339
- Joanie’s Joint – $85,803,863
- Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre – $78,851,830
- Skar’s Movies and Meat Pies – $76,087,549
- JHW’s Cineplex – $69,480,658
- DumCheese’s Cineplex – $34,163,612
I have managed to hold on to first place… so still rigged… but the gap between me and the the middle of the pack is only $20 million, something a big week could make disappear with the right (or wrong) picks. And speaking of big weeks, we are finally getting one. Week three has a blockbuster anchor showing up, with the options as:
Incredibles 2 FRI $521 Incredibles 2 SAT $427 Incredibles 2 SUN $350 Ocean's 8 $201 Tag $145 Solo $89 Deadpool 2 $78 Superfly $71 Hereditary $62 Avengers: Infinity War $48 Adrift $26 Book Club $25 Hotel Artemis $13 Upgrade $11 Life of the Party $11
The Incredibles 2 is on the scene and split across three days as it is expected to bring in… more than Solo did on its opening weekend. Also new on the scene are Tag and Superfly.
All of that meant somebody had to get dropped, and so we say farewell for now to Breaking In, Overboard, A Quiet Place, Action Point, and RBG.
As for what to pick… well, as I have said in the past, if the pricing was perfect just spending your full $1000 budget would be enough. But we know pricing is imperfect, some times comically so.
For this weekend you have to be at least seriously considering a lineup anchored on one day, if not two, of The Incredibles 2. The long range forecast puts it at about $140 million for the weekend, with the FML split at 40%/33%/27% for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. So that could be $56 million for Friday, $46 million for Saturday, and about $38 million for Sunday. But the forecast is imperfect and the split is imperfect, and the prediction for all the other features are imperfect. It could hit $150 million and be heavy on Saturday because it is a kids film.
Your other anchor options are Ocean’s 8, which is probably good for about $20 million, and Tag, which looks awful (as do a lot of movies these days, but I’m a grumpy old man on that front) with had a forecast of $13 million last week.
Then there is a lot of expensive filler. The new Superfly, a remake of the famed 70s blacksploitation flick, second to Shaft in my mind, but still a thing in its day, which looks to be good for $8 million, and is cheaper than Solo or Deadpool 2, which I gather FML thinks are both going to have a gentle drop this week.
And at the cheap end there is competing filler. In the dollar difference race between Adrift and Book Club I might take Book Club, while in the low end race between Hotel Artemis, Upgrade, and Life of the Party, I’d probably take Upgrade over Life of the Party, but Hotel Artemis might be correctly priced this week after last week’s debacle.
My Monday Hot Takes league pick this week is 2x Incredibles SAT, 1x Deadpool 2, 5x Hotel Artemis., which leaves me $3 to spare. We’ll see if I change my mind on that before Thursday morning rolls around.
Go make your picks! The league locks in less than 24 hours after this post goes live.
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