Each week Jacob recaps the weekend box office and the winners and losers in the Midnight Warrior Fantasy Movie League.
WEEK 07 BOX OFFICE BREAKDOWN
Well all of the prognosticators were wrong. If you asked anybody on Friday, they’d say for sure that La La Land and Hidden Figures were in the showdown of the ages. The week was already wide-open, but those were the only real contenders for Best Performer this week. Now, the real contest was going to be for the fillers at the bottom half of these lineups. That was what we though on Friday at least.
It turns out the real competition was between the new horror flick The Bye Bye Man and some weird Nickelodeon Pixar knockoff called Monster Trucks. Even though The Bye Bye Man became the clear victor with $120.7K/bux, Hidden Figures, Monster Trucks, and La La Land were all within $3K/bux of each other, with the edge just going to Hidden Figures. When you add it all up, that puts the perfect cineplex at 6x Bye Bye Man / 1x Hidden FIgures / 1x blank. Even weirder than that, only 8 players found this strange combination, and none of them are even in the Top 500 for this season, and that’s AFTER you count last week.
As for the Midnight Warrior Fantasy Movie League, former guest of the show Bury Me With My Movies managed to find first place in our league with what he claims is a joke lineup of 7x Monster Trucks and 1x Underworld : Blood Wars. Then, my two favorite players came in tied for second with my lineup suggested in this article last week, so congrats to Scruffy-looking Nerfherder and Monarch Theater!
Join War Starts at Midnight to compete against the 20 other Cineplexes in this league!
Even more interesting was the shake-up near the top of our league. Finding herself back on top for the second season in a row is O PC, Where Art Thou? with $702MM on the season. This passes School of Rock for the first time of the year, who is at $701MM. Yes, less than $1 million dollars separates these two, so every week really matters now. Who is brave enough to risk it, and who will just hedge their bets? As for your’s truly, I’m at $690 and I’m really desperate for a new beautiful white mug, so I’m risking it all. But I wonder what films I will pick for this week…
WEEK 08 PREDICTIONS
With a return to the regular 3 day weekend, you would think this week would be easy. Well, you’re learning that Award Season is never easy. With plenty of new entries for this week, I’m going to run through them in the order I predict their $/bux will be.
- Split – It’s expensive, it’s M. Night, and we just had The Bye Bye Man, but this thing is still going to make some bank. I just don’t think it can be number one with BBM still picking up tickets.
- xXx: Return of Xander Cage – If you hated the first xXx, you have poor taste in movies. Actually, I watched it when I was 15, so that could have influenced me just a little bit. Unless all of the kids who were 15 in 2002 go to see this, I don’t see it outperforming the advertising that is bringing Split to every single episode of every Hulu show I watch.
- 20th Century Women – This movie won’t make money, but I love Greta Gerwig. This could be a value play, but I don’t see it happening.
- The Founder – McDonald’s or Michael Keaton, which one is more popular. McDonald’s is ok, but who doesn’t love Michael Keaton? I’d tell you who is more popular, but if I say his name a third time he might suddenly appear. Actually why would I not want that? MICHAEL KEATON
Where does that leave us? To be honest I don’t know. I’m going with a strong hold on Patriot’s Day, with Split as an anchor. Pick your poison on the low end filler, but I’m going with Miss Gerwig. Or maybe I’ll go watch Mistress America again instead. Yeah, that’s the ticket!
If you want to know more about my last minute updates on Friday morning, follow me on Twitter @jakerg23.