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.

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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

What a crazy close season this has been. I somehow find myself at 215th after some really awful weeks, but, according to a recent FML post, being in the top 500 this season puts you only about 4.98% of total box office value away from being in first place. One year ago, that same amount from the first place cineplex would have you almost cracking the top 100. This is just a highly competitive season, and not only in our league.

This week was one of the head-scratcher weeks where you have to pick some bottom of the barrel fillers and run with them. Hopefully, you trusted in the power of The Rock and played a whole bunch of Fate of the Furious. The real question with this film isn’t about how it keeps making money, but how will it fare next week when Dwayne Johnson anchors another major release in Baywatch (but we’ll cover that later).

At the top is the no-surprise anchor Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2. I say no surprise because I wasn’t one of the people who put a lot of faith in Alien: Covenant. I, for some inexplicable reason, played it anyway, and it only beat the discount Guardians by about $1.5 million at the box office. Yes, it was number one for the week, but that’s nothing to be too proud of when you barely beat the 3rd weekend of another space movie.

Finally, Everything Everything exceeded expectations, coming in at $11.7 million. It only ended up at a 48% on the Tomatometer, but that didn’t stop the book readers from flocking to see this adaptation. We’ll have to see if it can survive out in cineplexes this weekend, or if it should stay locked inside far away from your lineups.

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Each week Jacob recaps the weekend box office and the winners and losers in the Midnight Warrior Fantasy Movie League.

WEEK 11 BOX OFFICE BREAKDOWN

What does it mean when a little movie called Lowriders gets the Best Performer bonus? This. Means War! Yes, on a minuscule sub-300 theater count, this film blew away the competition, with about 40% more than Beauty and the Beast (of which I was a strong believer). Don’t worry though, the live action Disney flick managed to waltz its way into the Perfect Cineplex as well, posting a strong $4.8 million, which is not bad at all for its 7th weekend.

Emma Watson isn’t the only one throwing gold in the McDuck pool this weekend, with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2  contributing $65 million on its own. Who knows how long this Disney box office domination will continue, but for now just enjoy the endless stream of comic movies and remakes, and sometimes sequels to comic book movies. I hope you own stock in capes and big poofy dresses.

Rounding out the PC was Snatched with a disappointing $19 million, and Fate of the Furious staying surprisingly strong in weekend number 5. If you check Wednesday numbers for this week, you’ll see it’s still number 4 at the box office. People love fast cars, it’s as simple as that.

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Each week Jacob recaps the weekend box office and the winners and losers in the Midnight Warrior Fantasy Movie League.

WEEK 10 BOX OFFICE BREAKDOWN

Sell hello to one of the most bankable star in Hollywood these days… Andy Dwyer. I’m still a little amazed that Chris Pratt is this beloved. It’s not that he doesn’t have the talent, looks, or personality, because he has everything. Just when I started watching Parks and Recreation, I never would have guessed that he could helm the $145 million opening of one of the most massive sequels of the year. So, until the Burt Macklin bio-pic lands in theaters, let’s be happy that James Gunn found our man for Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2.

Everybody had Guardians in their lineup this week, and Sunday became the day to play it. I totally called it… even if I took a massive swing and a miss on How To Be A Latin Lover. I’m going to say that Fate of the Furious was helped by the sellout Guardians crowd looking for something else to see. That’s not something you can really predict, but I’m sure it helped sell thickets this week.

The final film was Born in China, or, as we like to call it, “slightly better than a $2 million blank screen”. I’m also going to go out on a limb and say nobody who showed up to a sold out Guardians fell back to see this film. But maybe it was boosted by the “teenagers looking for a place to make out” crowd. But, then again, there’s always Unforgettable for that.

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Each week Jacob recaps the weekend box office and the winners and losers in the Midnight Warrior Fantasy Movie League.

WEEK 09 BOX OFFICE BREAKDOWN

Well, foreign language film week is over, and the winner is probably not what you expected. Even a worldwide theater count of about 9,000 screens for Baahubali 2: The Conclusion couldn’t put it over the box office juggernaut that is… Eugenio Derbez? A man so unknown that he doesn’t even appear in Google’s cast for the film. Well at least to me, but that may be because I didn’t see 2013’s Instructions Not Included.

In any case, How To Be A Latin Lover more than doubled its projections and cruised to a Best Performer bonus runner-up. Wait, runner-up? Yes, the massive theater bump for Get Out places it as the Best Performer in what is sure to be its last week in FML. Let’s take a moment of silence as we say goodbye to the best movie of 2017. I predict it will stay that way, as long as an infant doesn’t hop behind the wheel of an automobile…

The strangest part of this week, however, is the fact that not one person played the Perfect Cineplex shown below. In fact, the best anybody could do was have Going in Style slated in where Get Out should be. This is the first time since the early days of FML that this has happened. Even me, your resident FML genius dunce, made the assumption that if the Jordan Peele flick was getting $2 million in bonus, it would need to be all over your cineplex. Goes to show, don’t always listen to the geniuses! struggling FML bloggers!

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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

I might be on record as saying Week 08 would be a total crap shoot with it’s 7 new releases, but you didn’t have to be gifted to see what the perfect cineplex was going to be this week. After theater counts came out on Thursday and the numbers really sank in, it was clear that Captain America was going to take Gifted to an easy Best Performer bonus. Nothing was even close. The next best performer out of the new releases was The Promise, which brought in $4.1 million dollars (which is about 4 million more than I thought it would make).

When you know you’re going to stack 7 screens of the Best Performer, it’s easy to know that you’re going to anchor with the Big Bald Badass Movie of the Week. This week that meant playing 8 Fast 8 Furious. It topped the charts with $38.4 million, but that’s a mere formality after the strong play from the reboot of Disney’s Smart Guy snags you $14 million in bonuses alone.

It’s no wonder 453 users found that perfect cineplex this week. That’s the most since Spring Week 01 when Get Out and The Shack combined for a Perfect Cineplex. Coincidentally, that’s the last time I found the PC. Maybe I’m not the prognosticator of prognosticators, but at least I don’t miss the boat completely.

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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

When a giant movie drops, and doesn’t flop, and seems to be the only movie at the box office that anybody is talking about, it starts to warp your sense of what happens in FML. You would think that would mean it’s the thing to play in its debut week, even if it is split into 3 days. One of those days is going to land you pretty high on its own merit, even if it doesn’t get the Best Performer bonus.

Well, the highest grossing cineplex I could find to feature The Fate of the Furious was number 2134. So, needless to say, it was not our winner this week. Instead, the boy wonder Boss Baby managed to anchor it’s second straight perfect cineplex on the back of a $16 million dollar take. It may be down $10 million from Week 06, but it was still enough to take that $2 million dollar bonus to the bank.

Even though this was the slimmest of margins of victory over The Case for Christ, that film was completely blanked in the perfect cineplex. Instead, Smurfs: The Lost Village joined two screens of Get Out and one of Life to give that big $5 million bump for the week.

And, get ready to say goodbye to Life and a bunch of other films, as we enter Week 08: The Week Of The New Releases You Never Heard Of.

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Each week Jacob recaps the weekend box office and the winners and losers in the Midnight Warrior Fantasy Movie League.

WEEK 06 BOX OFFICE BREAKDOWN

Week 06 was the week of the Man Movie. The knock down drag out fight of the week was going to be between Logan and Kong: Skull Island. Would the aging super hero in the (now) aging super hero film show its value at $57 dollars, or would the big ol’ monkey climb the tower to get that $2 million Best Performer bonus?

I, and many others in our league, banked on the big bad ape, but in the end the Wolverine had what may be his last stand in the Perfect Cineplex. 334 cineplexes were smart enough to stack 6 screens of the old man, and pair it with the young woman in the jumpsuit, and the little baby in the business suit. Powered by the $12 million in bonuses, plus the $5 million PC bonus, this cineplex would net you about $74 million.

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Each week Jacob recaps the weekend box office and the winners and losers in the Midnight Warrior Fantasy Movie League.

WEEK 05 BOX OFFICE BREAKDOWN

You would think that, with me being in Los Angeles, somehow just being so close to the epicenter of the movie world would give me some special insight into the Perfect Cineplex, and I would steal away a victory with a can’t miss lineup. But no, instead I found myself driving around Los Angeles, looking for parking, and trying to set a lineup at 9 AM! How do people out there have brains working that early every morning? It’s insanity.

That’s not the only thing insane that happened this week. Niki Caro’s The Zookeeper’s Wife managed to sneakily collect $3.3 million in box office on only 541 screens, letting it coast in easily as this week’s BP bonus winner. It’s my personal opinion that this film’s heavy advertising before all the Oscar films helped out with building buzz, because its 60% fresh Rotten Tomatoes rating certainly wasn’t putting butts in the seats.

This week’s new animated film The Boss Baby did a very respectable $50.2 million this week. This makes a lot of sense when you think how long we have been without a new animated feature. The last was The Lego Batman Movie, which I think targets a different demographic than this cutesy family film. The last two slots are the “man movies” of the week, with Kong: Skull Island and Logan rounding out the perfect cineplex.

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Each week Jacob recaps the weekend box office and the winners and losers in the Midnight Warrior Fantasy Movie League.

WEEK 04 BOX OFFICE BREAKDOWN

While most of us thought we’d be saying “Go go Power Rangers!” come Monday, instead we found ourselves barely speaking to people around us in the style of this week’s BP bonus winner Logan. It’s looking like this A+ super-anti-hero flick has long adamantium legs. Bringing in $109.9K/bux, the man with the sideburns finished just a slice above Power Rangers and Kong: Skull Island in a heated BP race.

When one picture runs away with the $2 million bonus unexpectedly, you end up with a 6x stack like you see here. Add in that high-value Power Rangers anchor up top plus one screen of the surprisingly long-lived The Shack and you’ve got yourself one of the 39 Perfect Cineplexes awarded this week.

On the other hand, if you played Wilson, you probably didn’t do as well. When a movie costing only 75% of your film’s cost beats you outright, you know you’re having a bad week. But maybe that fits the character. Did ANYBODY actually see this one? Please comment and tell me about it, because I’m genuinely interested.

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