Each week Jacob recaps the weekend box office and the winners and losers in the Midnight Warrior Fantasy Movie League.
WEEK 12 BOX OFFICE BREAKDOWN
Week 12 was not my finest week, but at least give me the chance to put it in perspective. Yes, I did finish dead last in our league, only earning about half of our first place gurus. Yes, I banked on the worst performer of the week, playing Logan Lucky on 5 screens, and, yes, I left a screen blank in order to fit that fifth Logan. But, I was in full aggression mode to catch the first place duo and I had a lot of faith in the heist film. The trailer was great, the reviews were great, and everybody was sleeping on it in the Chatter. So I went for it, and I’m still in third place in our league for the season. At least I can say I’m not dumb enough to try something like that again.
As for movies that didn’t suck last week, apparently, The Emoji Movie earned more than the 75 cents I expected it to make last week. It barely won out over its Perfect Cineplex mate The Hitman’s Bodyguard. I can’t understand why anybody would go and see either of these movies, so you can see why this illogical cineplex totally escaped me. Please leave a comment telling me why anybody would have gone to these last weekend. At least I see the appeal in Despicable Me 3. The other ones just boggle my mind. I feel a lot like Tommy Lee Jones in No Country for Old Men.
As for the Midnight Warrior league, it comes as no surprise that School of Rock topped the group this week, followed by I Smell Cineplex and Candy. I’m just going to leave that on my clipboard to use every single week for this section. The former trusted The Nut Job 2 over Emoji, while the latter went with The Glass Castle. Neither were bad picks and obviously, both of them were wise to stay away from Logan Lucky. I’m still scratching my head on that one. Seriously, how did this movie not do better?
Going into the last week of the season School of RockI Smell Cineplex and Candy leads by only 6 million, so this is going down to the wire, and not to spoil anything, but this week is going to be maddening.
WEEK 13 PREDICTIONS
I said things would be maddening, and with low-priced anchors and relatively higher priced filler, you really have no clue what to do. Let’s run down the new releases, at least.
- Birth of the Dragon ($99) – This WWE produced Bruce Lee biopic looks pretty awful, and that’s coming from a guy who likes Bruce Lee and his story. Pair that with an absurdly low 1,617 theaters, and it’s a can’t play. I mean really, don’t put this even close to your cineplex.
- Leap! ($68) – Long story short: it’s in 2,500 theaters so how can you pass it up? It only needs $140 per show to reach the bonus bar, but I don’t know that there was enough of an ad campaign to reach this total, especially with that green rotten tomato next to the film. Still, it’s very hard not to trust it.
- All Saints ($67) – This Christian film has a much higher hurdle to jump at $355 a show, and being in only 800 theaters makes it hard to compete. It could do well, but there are so many viable low-priced options that I think this just isn’t the right weekend.
Also of note: Wonder Woman is going to be on 2,210 screens. This is just absurd for the $50 bux, and you may want to seriously consider it. I don’t know where to go this week. I’m still thinking about Logan Lucky. I’m going to go and see it this weekend (as long as Harvey doesn’t flood the theater, and I don’t mean Weinstein). The word of mouth is great, and I never claimed to get smarter after my failures. All in on Logan Lucky!
If you think this lineup will be unlucky this week, please warn me on Twitter @jakerg23.