Fall FML Mid Season Glance

In hindsight I wish I had carried on and done an official Fantasy Movie League for the fall season.

Autumn is an odd time for movies.  It sits in a gap between the summer blockbusters and the end of the year rush to get the Oscar candidates up on screen. (The academy is old and has a very short memory.)  This makes it a time when some odd movies that wouldn’t stand up during either end of the season feel safe to show up.

Of course, there are the usual seasonal expectations.  Halloween demands horror, and the season opened up with IT: Chapter Two, which rang in at $91 million its opening week and which I might have expected it to be the big release of the season and to still be lingering about at the bottom of the picks after seven weeks.

But it isn’t.  It has gone.  And it has been eclipsed.

The Joker came along with a $96 million first week showing in a season when a lot of weeks the top film is more in the $30 million range.  And that might not be the peak for the season.  The season will wrap up with Frozen II, which is bound to be big.

And in the middle even some of those $30 million films haven’t been bad.  I enjoyed Downtown Abby even if it was a wholly unnecessary fan service cash grab.  And unless the reviews are bad I will go see Midway to compare it to the 70s film.  Also I happen to be finishing up Shattered Sword, a detailed look at the Japanese side of the battle that has become the definitive English language source for that aspect of events.  And they just happened to have found the wrecks of the Kaga and Akagi, two of the four Japanese carriers sunk during the battle.

I’m also keen to see Jojo Rabbit, though with plans this weekend I will have to hope it lasts for a couple weeks in theaters.

Mostly though I am interested in what a close race the season is turning out to be.  There are only six of us picking regularly… if I do another season of posts I will probably limit it to a top five race since we couldn’t even sustain ten regulars over the summer… but the top five in the pack are close enough that any one of us could end up on top by the end.  The current standings at the end of week seven are:

1. Wilhelm’s Qeynosian Kinetoscope – $509,212,563
2. Cyanbane’s Neuticles Viewing Party – $504,887,493
3. Too Orangey For Crows – $504,525,995
4. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $494,337,399
5. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $491,669,647

There is less than at $18K gap between first and fifth.  I am not sure we have seen a race still that close seven weeks in.  It is close enough that changes in the weekend estimates between Saturday and Sunday this past week changed the lineup.

And the different rules continues to set our league apart.  Just about every other week the perfect pick for us is different from the main league.  The $2 million bonus for the worst performer and no penalty for empty screens can shake things up.

Anyway, we shall see how the final tally comes out.  There are six weeks left to go.