Each week Jacob recaps the weekend box office and the winners and losers in the Midnight Warrior Fantasy Movie League.
Week 09 did not go as well for me as my Week 08 Madea prognosticating. Was I smart to get off the Boo! train while it was hot? (Spoilers: No. I am not a smart man.) Let’s start off with a breakdown of last week.
WEEK 09 BOX OFFICE BREAKDOWN
How could we all be so dumb on Halloween/Diwali weekend? If you went purely by calendar based selections you’d have 7/8 of your perfect box office spelled out for you. Add in a dash of The Accountant and there you have your perfect cinema for week 9.
It looks like another week of Tyler Perry’s Boo! A Madea Halloween outperforming all expectations. Hope you enjoyed it Mr. Perry, but I think Halloween is behind us now and so is Boo!‘s time in the perfect cineplex. Another surprise was Ae Dil Hai Mushkil using its niche appeal to Indian-Americans to power to a $2.19 million box office and the best performer tag. Unfortunately, my Office Depot desk calendar didn’t tell me it was Diwali so I went with 7 Ouija screens and took the hit for it. Not awful, but not the way to make a first place finish this week.
Have you or someone you know seen The Accountant? I thought the film’s 51% rotten rating would scare people away. I’m learning that audience score might have a lot more to do with week-to-week word of mouth than the Tomatometer. How else can you explain the top box office spots going to this and the 23% rating of Boo!?
As for the Midnight Warrior league, Scruffy-looking Nerfherder nailed the 4 Madea pick to barely edge out Chris’ cineplex. Going into week 10 we really only have two main contenders for our post-Week 3 champion: Film School Dropout and School of Rock. What makes that even more interesting is their almost identical lineups from this past week. This will be the interesting battle to watch over the last 4 weeks of this Fall season.
WEEK 10 PREDICTIONS
So this week there’s only one real question: do you trust the $830 Doctor Strange or would you rather have 2 screens of Trolls? Normally I’m partial to going against animated films, especially of the non-Disney variety, but there’s plenty of DreamWorks history to show that this could be a sleeper this week. I’m thinking most people will pick Cumberbatch and a host of low price pictures to go with it. Does the evergreen Storks end up in the best cineplex yet again? If so I’ll just have to be wrong on it. You don’t make it to the top with safe bets on children’s movies (unless you’re School of Rock).
Here’s my suggestion: on Thursday check to see how many screens are showing Moonlight. If it’s over 350, go with 1x Strange, 6x Moonlight, and your choice of any film that is not Keeping Up With The Joneses. I’m partial towards Deepwater Horizon this week because it seems like a movie with longer legs than the others, but it’s a true toss-up with the riskier Ae Dil Hai Mushkil. But for Deepwater at least I’ve even heard some good reviews through the grapevine at work. That’s the lineup I’m hoping I can go with.
However, If Moonlight is on fewer than 350 screens, go with a big hedge play. Take the good audience reviews from The Accountant and Miss Peregrine’s and round out your cineplex with Ae Dil Hai Mushkil on two screens. Not a lot of risk here but a possible high upside from Mushkil. I don’t think this will get the perfect cineplex, but I still think it is a very solid play:
Do you have a reason to pick Trolls? Or do you just want to troll me for my picks? Either way, let me know at @jakerg23.