Each week Jacob recaps the weekend box office and the winners and losers in the Midnight Warrior Fantasy Movie League.
WEEK 08 BOX OFFICE BREAKDOWN
On Friday night, I broke one of my cardinal rules of movie-going, namely the one where I never go to Friday night movies, especially to see a movie coming out that weekend. Well, Christopher Nolan is enough to motivate me to leave the war bunker and go out amongst the common folk.
Before the movie, I saw a crowd of people outside of one of the theaters just milling around. It took a few minutes, but I realized they were waiting for the staff to clean out the prior screening of Girls Trip so they could go in immediately and score good seats. After my mind (and eardrums) were blown away by Dunkirk, I put on my MCU civilian disguise and went back out into the world. What did I see? A group of about 30 women in matching white t-shirts that had been printed with some slogan. These women came out in a big group just to see Girls Trip.
Anecdotal evidence isn’t always worth anything, but I left the AMC happy as hell that I had maxed out Girls Trip. Also, The Big Sick did really well, but I can’t say that I saw any groups in Cricut printed shirts proclaiming their love for Kumail.
As for the Midnight Warrior league, School of Rock scored his third Perfect Cineplex of the season and has catapulted himself into first place over I Smell Cineplex and Candy. These two go back and forth every week, and I expect the next 5 weeks to be exciting to watch, especially as some of the easier summer films fade away and we’re faced with whatever the theaters have vowed to unleash to us in August.
Because I know everybody cares about my cineplex as well, I’d like to point out that I also found the Perfect Cineplex, and have somehow worked back from an abysmal start of the season to find third place yet again. Unlike last year, however, only $10 million separates third place from 7th place, so it’s still anybody’s game this year. Play aggressively if you want to catch the top dogs, or play it safe and hope the aggressive players drop more bombs than a Supermarine Spitfire. (For the record, I know the Spitfire didn’t drop bombs, but the German bombers at the time of Dunkirk was a Messerschmitt Bf 109 and that just doesn’t work for a punchline.)
WEEK 09 PREDICTIONS
Coming off a hot week where I nailed the Perfect Cineplex, I should be feeling better. However, my suggested lineup only finished 7th. One reader had the suggestion that I start a cineplex that plays my weekly recommendation just to see how it works out, so look for that cineplex come Fall 2017. Until then, let’s run down this week’s new releases.
- Atomic Blonde ($289) – Eternal beauty Charlize Theron goes platinum blonde in Focus Features’ latest action flick from part of the duo that brought you the cult smash hit John Wick. The 77% fresh Tomatometer score doesn’t scream to play or to avoid, so the question is if you trust the ad blitz that has been invading my Youtube and Hulu as of late. For 3,300 theaters, this doesn’t imply great value for me, so I’m going to avoid it. If you absolutely have to have a high price filler because you trust Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 then this is better than the alternative.
- The Emoji Movie ($400) – The Emoji Movie is looking to cash in on phone clip art in the same way Lord and Miller turned plastic blocks into stacks of cash. Personally, $400 bux is too high of a price tag for what could be a total complete flop for the ages. Even if the long-range forecast is trending up, it’s hard for me to trust this with the other films that are out there right now. Yes, $400 gets you in about 4,000 theaters, but if it’s 4,000 empty theaters it doesn’t matter.
So where does that leave us? The pricing team did a great job this week, and nothing is showing a must-play value for the screen count. If you know about a secret busload of people going to Guardians and you want to cash in on your insider knowledge, please play that. Otherwise, I’m going with Spider-Man: Homecoming since I heard one has great legs. Or was it eight legs? Either way, I wanted to avoid Wonder Woman since I think Girls Trip takes viewers away from the super heroine, but in order to fit Baby Driver in there I had to pick some filler at the bottom.
If you’re going to spend your personal money on tipping the scales in favor of Guardians, please tell me about it on Twitter @jakerg23.