Each week Jacob recaps the weekend box office and the winners and losers in the Midnight Warrior Fantasy Movie League.
WEEK 01 BOX OFFICE BREAKDOWN
Welcome to the War Starts at Midnight weekly Fantasy Movie League breakdown, where I attempt to explain the unexplainable: why movies over- and under-perform their expectations at the box office!
This week we had a resurgent performance in the third week for The Edge of Seventeen as it parlayed some good reviews into finally exceeding some expectations. Lots of people on the FML Chatter were listing it as a strong BP candidate. In fact, these 3 films were the highest three $ per bux plays of the week. Just missing the cut was Allied, a movie that I thought would sneak into the BP bonus. Instead, it couldn’t even beat Arrival, which was helped by an unexpected screen count boost.
The best cineplex was, of course, anchored by a strong performance from Disney’s Moana. It’s no surprise that this film is doing well, but it is falling short of 2013’s Frozen, as some people had been using as a comparison. Expect Moana to easily dominate the children’s market for the rest of the year.
This week started out with School of Rock throwing a near-perfect cineplex out. Apparently, Chris got his math wrong and showed one too many screens of Edge of Seventeen on his cineplex Son, You’ve Got A Panty on Your Head.
You might be wondering what happened to his name from last season, “Tell Mr. Royal This is The Pagoda.” Well, as with all good fantasy sports leagues, each year is the time to grab a new name. I have become CinepLex Luthor, and I plan on being the villain of this season. If you doubt me, just look at the awful “recommendation” I gave in last week’s article. (Full disclosure: That was just me punting on what was a very difficult week, I would never knowingly steer you guys wrong.)
(Or would I?)
(I wouldn’t.)
Join War Starts at Midnight to compete against the 18 other Cineplexes in this league!
WEEK 01 PREDICTIONS
This week should, on paper at least, be the most normal week for a long time in FML. We don’t have any holidays to think about, and there aren’t any crazy competing events. That just puts us looking at movies and deciding which new release we trust the most.
Right now, we have the heavily marketed Office Christmas Party and the not-so-heavily marketed Miss Sloane. Well, I don’t know about you, but personally, I don’t trust either of these films. I’ll be surprised if Office Christmas Party can reach $16 million. It may be funny, and it may have some of the parts of Horrible Bosses, and it may have the promise of a funny Kate McKinnon, but I just don’t wee it being FML relevant at a $380 price tag.
So, I go back to Fantastic Beasts and Doctor Strange. The Marvel film has a strong shot at earning you a 5x Best Performer bonus now that it has a reasonable $77 price tag. That leaves you $600 or so to spend, and I don’t trust that Moana and two cheap friends are going to bring in as much as 3x Beasts. So, go with the unreal action adventures this week.
Maybe you think I’m wrong, and you think that it’s time to get in the spirit and play 2x Office Christmas Party and 6x Almost Christmas and have yourself an Almost Christmas Party. If so, tell me about it on twitter, and follow me @jakerg23.