Each week Jacob mines the Fantasy Movie League chatter for all the data that matters. Listen to the podcast to find out how to join our listener league and compete with other Midnight Warriors for the coveted FML Champion coffee mug.

WEEK 12: JUSTICE FOR THE DC UNIVERSE?

Are theaters bracing for the worst with Justice League? As of publishing, this film sits at a 37% Rotten Tomato score, down considerably from yesterday when it had a shocking (at the time) 47% fresh rating. This means the DC flagship film is sinking fast. This doesn’t always matter for FML purposes, but this film is priced even higher than Thor: Ragnarok was just two weeks ago.

The really shocking thing to me is the fact that Justice League is landing in fewer theaters than Thor. I’m not talking about on opening night either, I mean this weekend. Yes, two week old Thor is still outpacing Justice League for screens, and on paper that film should be competing with The Avengers, not one of the lesser character flicks.

I don’t even know what to make of it. Either some smaller theaters didn’t want to take the risk, or Warner Brothers just isn’t fighting that hard to get this film out there. Ads have been flooding the internet and television since (from my recollection) the dawn of time at this point. Will that be enough to convince movie-goers to crawl away from their home entertainment systems this week? Let’s find out.

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Each week Jacob mines the Fantasy Movie League chatter for all the data that matters. Listen to the podcast to find out how to join our listener league and compete with other Midnight Warriors for the coveted FML Champion coffee mug.

WEEK 11: STILL THOR AFTER LAST WEEK

Thor: Ragnarok has been out for about a week stateside, and it has already crossed over $500 million in total gross. So far, the film is beating Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 and Doctor Strange in offshore markets according to Deadline, and it’s on track to make about another $60 million for FML purposes this weekend. Yet in the strange world of FML, this wasn’t enough last weekend to overcome tiny little Geostorm.

Yes, the god of thunder lost out to a colossal flop about weather control and space and Gerard Butler or something. Many people did get solid performances from going with Thor, but you can never underestimate the lower priced films and what a solid performance can do at those low prices.

Luckily (or unluckily) we have 11 low priced films all under $35 bux. This means you have a ton of options to fill out your cineplex, but you have to start with picking an anchor. Let’s start by looking at the two new anchors this week.

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Each week Jacob mines the Fantasy Movie League chatter for all the data that matters. Listen to the podcast to find out how to join our listener league and compete with other Midnight Warrirors for the coveted FML Champion coffee mug.

WEEK 10: A BAD MOM’S WEEK AFTER HALLOWEEN

Why do we let Wal-Mart determine when the Christmas season starts? Every year they push the Christmas section up earlier and earlier in the year. On Halloween night, I saw the section full of Christmas candy already out for eager shoppers. That’s all fine for retail, but do you really want to drop your Christmas movie before you’ve even eaten all the Halloween candy?

STX Entertainment is betting that you’re fine with sneaking black and orange candy into a Christmas movie, so it’s dropping A Bad Moms Christmas on November 3. That’s too early for me. I couldn’t tell if this was when Christmas movies always came out, or if I just wanted to be angry. Here’s some research:

Now it’s unlikely that any of that will help you set your lineup, but it goes to show that release date really doesn’t matter when it comes to making a classic Christmas film. Now, it may affect the box office numbers, which is what we really care about. For that one, A Bad Moms Christmas is not up against the calendar as much as it’s up against the TV show we pay $12 per episode to see on a really big TV: Marvel Cinematic Universe S3:E2.

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Each week Jacob mines the Fantasy Movie League chatter for all the data that matters. Listen to the podcast to find out how to join our listener league and compete with other Midnight Warrirors for the coveted FML Champion coffee mug.

WEEK 08: ONLY THE BRAVE WILL SEE GEOSTORM

This week looks like flop central. I’ve seen news stories already calling The Snowman a massive failure. One review called it the “cinematic equivalent of hypothermia.” Yet, it does star Michael Fassbender, who commands a cult following due to his incredible acting skills. Also, the movie is called The Snowman, which is totally dumb in any month except October. All that being said, this might not even be the main bomb for the week.

Geostorm has already been declared the loser to Boo 2! A Madea Halloween before the first person has entered a screening of either. Geostorm cost $15 million in reshoots alone, or what we like to call “the cost of Get Out and Split and Happy Death Day put together.” Deadline.com is reporting first weekend earnings of $10-$12 million, or what we like to call “10-12% of what those three movies opened at put together.”

But, none of that really matters in Fantasy Movie League terms. The only thing that sets expectations is the price as determined by the guys behind the scenes at FML. So let’s dive in and find out if you should trust any of these bombs to anchor your cineplex.

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Each week Jacob mines the Fantasy Movie League chatter for all the data that matters. Listen to the podcast to find out how to join our listener league and compete with other Midnight Warrirors for the coveted FML Champion coffee mug.

WEEK 07: TO KILL A MARSHALL-BIRD

It’s October, so you’ve probably been seeing black and orange everywhere. Unless you’re a Cincinatti Bengals fan (and if you are, may God have mercy on you) then that can only mean one thing: Halloween. No, not the movie we just reviewed, the actual holiday. When people star seeing skeletons and black cats, they also start seeing scary movies.

Only one other day draws in horror fans like Halloween, and that’s Friday the 13th. No, not the movie we’re never going to review, I mean when the 13th day of the month falls on a Friday. Well, this week we see an October Friday the 13th, so get ready to roll out your horror movies, even if it is a $5 million dollar Blumhouse film.

If you want to know if you should play Happy Death Day you’ll have to keep reading. It’s possible some other movie, let’s say set in the future, or in a toy ninja world, could have good enough numbers to make you play against the scary Groundhog Day knockoff. You’re going to be extra mad when you realize I don’t give an answer and also you have to read this article over and over for eternity until you achieve self-actualization or solve your own murder (whichever comes first).

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Each week Jacob mines the Fantasy Movie League chatter for all the data that matters. Listen to the podcast to find out how to join our listener league and compete with other Midnight Warrirors for the coveted FML Champion coffee mug.

WEEK 06: BET ON THE BRONIES

So there’s a thing called “bronies”. These are grown men (and women) who love the children’s cartoon My Little Pony. The show has an active subreddit of about 63,000 users. This week has a blockbuster coming out in Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049, but all we can talk about is if the grown fans of a children’s show will treat an animated feature like it’s a Star Wars release.

One of the things I love about Fantasy Movie League is how our focus gets spotlighted on releases that normally most of us would totally overlook. Normally you really don’t have to know much about every single release, much less who the target demographic is. But, when you play FML, you end up visiting the My Little Pony subreddit just get a finger on the pulse of what all these damn bronies are thinking.

I wouldn’t think about that last part too much or you’re going to start trying to invest your time to positively improve your life, and if that time comes from your FML research time, you’re not going to finish very high on the leaderboards and that just sounds awful.

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Each week Jacob mines the Fantasy Movie League chatter for all the data that matters. Listen to the podcast to find out how to join our listener league and compete with other Midnight Warrirors for the coveted FML Champion coffee mug.

WEEK 05: ALL MY AMERICAN ASSASSINS ARE AMERICAN MADE

Fall always seems to be a hard season. It’s not awards season level hard, but some of those award films start creeping forward. Movies like Wind River sit out there for weeks collecting great reviews and you just never know when they’re going to pop and put up an amazing week.

Right alongside these are movies like American Assassin and American Made. They’re different movies, but they both feel like movies that just didn’t make the cut for summer. They aren’t bad enough to stash for Spring, but they aren’t good enough to make it to summer, and they’ll never win any awards. I don’t want to see these movies, and I’m not sure who does. I’m probably biased against them, but I’ll try to hide all my biases for this article.

Well, except for biases for my silver screen crush, who even looks good in a 70s tennis skirt… but more on that later.

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Each week Jacob mines the Fantasy Movie League chatter for all the data that matters. Listen to the podcast to find out how to join our listener league and compete with other Midnight Warrirors for the coveted FML Champion coffee mug.

WEEK 04: WHEN WE ALL GO WHERE NINJAGO

When lots of new movies drop at once, it throws a crazy wrench in the FML lineup process. When a third of the movies are new and the anchors are probably priced too high and the fillers priced too low, you have a recipe for a “moving week”. Besides the fact that I don’t particularly trust any of these anchors, the close pricing on the low-end means I don’t foresee a single dominant lineup in the Top 500 report unless we get some really strong preview numbers.

I’m going to do my best just to lay out information and let you put your chips anywhere on the roulette wheel you feel comfortable. If you’re doing well, this might be a good week to just hedge your bets. If you’re in my spot, you might be more tempted to bet on a LEGO brand and call it a day.

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Each week Jacob mines the Fantasy Movie League chatter for all the data that matters. Join our FML league to compete with other Midnight Warrirors for the coveted FML Champion coffee mug.

TULIP FEVER: THE KIND THAT CAN’T BE MEASURE BY DEGREES

We’re testing out a change of format here at War Starts at Midnight. We’ll still be doing weekly FML articles, but instead of reviewing the last week and giving a rundown of our Midnight Warrior league, we’re going to focus on predicting what’s happening in the upcoming week. I’ll still give previews of each and every new release, but I’m also going to give a summary of all the data I look at when making my choices this year.

Finally, I’m going to make an FML account to play my preview lineup, just so you can hold me accountable for when I decide to screen some awful bottom of the barrel movie 8 times. Like this week, when I inevitably pick Birth of the Dragon. Yeah, it might happen. Especially on a 4 day Labor Day FML weekend. What a way to open up the sure-to-be-confusing mess that will be Fall 2017.

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