Each week Jacob recaps the weekend box office and the winners and losers in the Midnight Warrior Fantasy Movie League.
WEEK 13 BOX OFFICE BREAKDOWN
For such a complicated season, the last week of Spring 2017 proved to be possibly the easiest week yet. The 376 Perfect Cineplexes ranks 3rd on the season, but it still didn’t take much to find this one. Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 is a veritable juggernaut, getting $27 million on this long Memorial Day weekend. This is the 4th weekend in a row that Starlord has anchored the PC, and it may not be the last at this rate. If Disney’s competition of the week Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Men Tell no Tales couldn’t knock off this juggernaut, I don’t know what will. Actually, it’s Wonder Woman but we can talk about that later.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul finally found it’s stride, finishing as the best offering of the lower fillers and finding the $2 million Best Performer bonus in the process. Kids movies do really well on holiday weekends, and the wimp did rise on Memorial Day, grossing $6.1 million and blowing away the next best play Snatched. This gave one of the simplest PCs of the Spring with 4x Guardians / 4x Wimpy taking the cake.
As for the War Starts at Midnight league, we finally have our champion: Madison Wondrous Madness who edged out Uldaddy’s Home by less than half a million dollars on the season. With a total of $1,366,735,368, Madison might have proved he’s your father, but he’ll never be Uldaddy. (I wasn’t going to let a last week’s good Yondu pun go to waste in my pocket!) This ended up being a highly competitive season, with our champion finishing 18th overall on the season. Last season’s overall champion AaroCO finished 23rd in our season this year and 493rd overall, which is a good showing. But, in the War Starts at Midnight league, you have to be one of the best of the best to come out on top.
In our listener league, I’d like you to meet the new champion (same as the old champion): Определенно не русский Синеплекс beat your’s truly out by a mere $6 million on the season. She finished 67th overall, and I finished 105th, just missing my personal goal of finishing in the top 100. Last season I finished 422nd, so I’m still very happy with the results in what was a very tumultuous season.
Also of note: No Vacancy has beat out School of Rock as promised. I can now retire my cineplex name and switch to something new. What clever new pun-based name will I choose? Well you’ll just have to read next week to find out, won’t you?
SUMMER WEEK 01 PREDICTIONS
Let’s all think happy thoughts for this summer season, and hope for easy clear cineplex decisions. I’ll put money on this summer being less crazy than the insane spring we just had. Before I give a reccomendation for this week, let’s run down the first new releases of the Summer season!
- Wonder Woman ($845) – This is a very interesting case. While Gal Godot’s turn at the red, yellow, and blue suit is getting a very high score on RottenTomatoes. Everything points to it doing gangbusters at the box office, but it’s still not something I’m trusting at that high of a price tag. I think it has to do very well to make it worth this money, and I’m just not sure that will happen. Unless the preview numbers come back golden, play at your own risk.
- Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie ($239) – This Dreamworks animated flick is coming in at a discount price. With no real children’s competition, and two weeks until Cars 3 lands, you’re looking at a classic “Jake doesn’t play kids movies” scenario. I’m not playing it this week, but this could be a runaway BP and a sleeper play for the next million weeks (see: Storks). Until I see better numbers, I’m going to trust some returning champs.
- 3 Idiotas ($17) – At 349 theaters, there’s not much chance that this poorly reviewed picture makes a run at BP. You may want to use some of the more successful Spanish language films as comparisons, but remember most of those were shown here because they were good movies. This one apparently doesn’t fit that mold. I’d avoid.
- Best of the Rest ($5) – For this price, you could have The Fate of the Furious with 592 theaters, or you could pick the mystery box because it could be anything! However, it’s unlikely that the best of the rest (probably The Lovers, but maybe How to be a Latin Lover) can compete with The Rock.
Where does that leave us? Personally, I think Wonder Woman will be good, but not good enough. I think a better way to spend your dollars is going with the relatively cheap holdover Pirates of the Caribbean, and stay on the Disney train with Guardians of the Galaxy, and bet on the bald guys in Fate instead of the Best of the Rest. However, if you want to go with Captain Underpants, consider 3 King Arthur and your choice of bottom barrel filler.
Think Wonder Woman can fly her invisible plane to victory? Tell me about it on Twitter @jakerg23.