BadAtGender

Fuuuuuuck!

Hmm... on one hand, the return of Lin will be just amp up the comfort level of the franchise. He's the director who made it happen, and getting back in the director's chair would make for an awesome experience. On the other, it felt like him choosing Beyond instead of F7 was an effort to work on some other material and not be pidgeonholed as the FF director. While Beyond disappointed financially, that can fairly be blamed on the marketing and not him, and he should still be getting offers elsewhere in Hollywood. It would be nice to see him do something else, because I'm sure he could do it very well. (WB: call him for some hero. Any hero.) Though maybe the ding of Beyond is bad, and he's needing to pull in a deserved favor to get this job. It could be like a one-year contract for a player wanting to boost his value. If this works (and there's no reason to think it shouldn't), he'll be able to do anything he likes. Again.

Looks like you pasted in the rules twice @JJ-8. 1. December 15-17 2. November 17-19 Abstain from part B

Thor Ragnarok (Thor) 3rd film - 1st Justice League (Man of Steel - BvS - JL) 3rd film - 1st Last Jedi (Star Wars) 9th film - 2nd Pitch Perfect (Pitch Perfect) 3rd film - 2nd 50 Shades Freed (50 shades) 3rd film - 3rd

Yeah, Abstain.

Week 2 - Yes

Flawless victory for me?

Week 1 - No

Weekly Questions will have 15 questions, except for the following weeks: Week 1 20 questions Thor Weekend 20 questions Justice League Weekend 20 questions Star Wars Weekend 20 questions Final Weekend 25 questions Part A: 1. Will Madea 2 Open to more than $22.5M? 1000 No 2. Will Geostorm Open to more than $15M? 2000 No 3. Will Only the Brave open to more than $12M? 3000 No 4. Will The Snowman open higher than any of the films mentioned in Q1-3? 4000 No 5. Will Same Kind of Different have a higher PTA than Geostorm? 5000 Yes 6. Will Blade Runner drop less than 55%? 1000 Yes 7. Will The 5 main new openers combine to more than $25M on Saturday? 2000 No 8. Will Happy Death Day stay in the top 2? 3000 Yes 9. Will My Little Pony stay above Victoria and Abdul? 4000 No 10. Will Flatliners have a higher weekend percentage drop than American Assassin? 5000 Yes 11. Will IT make more than $1M on Friday and Saturday? 1000 Yes 12. Will Ninjago drop more than 30% on Sunday? 2000 Yes 13. Will Kingsmen's PTA stay about $1350? 3000 No 14. Will the Foreigner decrease more than 52%? 4000 Yes 15. WIll Geostorm render all life meaningless upon its release? 5000 The real Geostorm happened on November 8, 2017 Bonus: 9/15 5000 10/15 8000 11/15 12,000 12/15 16,000 13/15 20,000 14/15 24,000 15/15 30,000 Part B: The top 3 predictions will score points as follows: Closest: Within 1% - 15,000, Within 2,5% - 12000, Within 5% 9,000, Within 10% - 6000 Outside 10% - 3000 points 2nd Closest: Within 1% - 12,000, Within 2,5% - 10000, Within 5% 7,000, Within 10% - 4000 Outside 10% - 2000 points 3rd Closest: Within 1% - 10,000, Within 2,5% - 8000, Within 5% 5,000, Within 10% - 2000 Outside 10% - 1000 points 1. What will Geostorm make for its 3 day OW? 9.47m 2. What will (Stephen King's) It's Sunday gross be? 980k 3. What will The Snowman's PTA be for the 3 day weekend? 2800 Part C: There will be 6 films to place and points are expanded because traditionally people haven't scored well here: 1. Boo! A Madea Halloween 3. Geostorm 5. Only the Brave 8. It 10. The Mountains Between Us 12. Kingsman: the Golden Circle Because I realised bonuses are stupid... 1/6 4,000 2/6 10,000 3/6 18,000 4/6 25,000 5/6 36,000 6/6 - 50,000 Please note: You are only eligible to score points on these questions if you complete all preseason predictions (and do not edit later) before Thursday October 19th at 11:59pm

Post predictions here, using this template for a 20k bonus starting score TOP 15 ETC PREDICTION TEMPLATE Below is a helpful template to use for making predictions. All Players who use this template for their predictions will receive 10,000 bonus points for making my life easier when I have to score everything at the end of the game. A: Domestic top 15: 1) Star Wars: The Last Jedi - 750 2) Justice League - 380 3) Thor: Ragnarok - 260 4) Coco - 210 5) Black Panther - 200 6) Pitch Perfect 3 - 140 7) Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle - 130 8) A Bad Moms Christmas - 110 9) Ferdinand - 105 10) Daddy's Home 2 - 92 11) 12 Strong - 90 12) Murder on the Orient Express - 81 13) The Greatest Showman - 77 14) Cloverfield - 72 15) The Commuter - 70 Backup 16*) Maze Runner 3 - 69 *Only used if a film above exits the game B: Top 7 Domestic OW: 1) Star Wars: The Last Jedi - 200 2) Justice League - 160 3) Thor: Ragnarok - 110 4) Black Panther - 100 5) Coco - 50 6) Pitch Perfect 3 - 41 7) Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle - 35 Backup 8*) 12 Strong - 32 *Only used if a film above exits the game C: Worldwide top 12: 1) Star Wars: The Last Jedi - 1,600 2) Justice League - 950 3) Thor: Ragnarok - 825 4) Coco - 650 5) Black Panther - 600 6) Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle - 350 7) Ferdinand - 280 8) Pitch Perfect 3 - 240 9) Murder on the Orient Express - 230 10) A Bad Moms Christmas - 185 11) The Greatest Showman - 170 12) Daddy's Home 2 - 160 Backup 13*) 12 Strong - 150 *Only used if a film above exits the game D: RANDOM FREE QUESTIONS RFQ1: Predict which film will finish closest to each of the following milestones domestically by the end of the game: A: 100M Ferdinand B: 200M Black Panther C: 300M Thor: Ragnarok D: 400M Justice League E: 500M Justice League RFQ2: Predict which film will finish closest to each of the following milestones Worldwide by the end of the game: A: $1.5B Star Wars: The Last Jedi B: $1B Justice League C: 800M Thor: Ragnarok D: 600M Black Panther E: 400M Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle RFQ3: Predict the top grossing film of each month: A: October (20th and 27th releases only) Boo! A Madea Halloween 2 B: November Justice League C: December Star Wars: The Last Jedi D: January 12 Strong E: February Black Panther DO NOT ALTER THE TEMPLATE! JUST ADD IN YOUR ANSWERS AS REQUIRED. FOLLOWING THIS ONE SIMPLE INSTRUCTION WILL LAND YOU 20,000 BONUS POINTS

Showed the trailer to some of my friends yesterday, some of whom aren't especially into CBMs, but are horror movie fans. They all seemed pretty impressed. (And surprised that it's going for such a straight horror route.)

I spent some time this evening listening to Another Brick in the Wall. All three parts, though Part 2 is the one that people mostly know, and it's the one they sampled for the trailer. The choice of it as music makes a lot of sense. The sequence from The Wall for Part 2 is pretty much nightmare fuel, already. Selecting it here works for the horror aspect, but it also plays really well into the mutants as a metaphor for puberty. (IMO, the best of the various things mutants have been a metaphor... for.) After doing that, I rewatched the trailer. And, it really works for me. I'm not generally into horror, so close genre fans might not be keen on it, but for me, it's a good 'un. It seems to be a good adaptation of the source material (although, not an exact one: Demon Bear is an inspiration, but not a template, so to speak), but it's also sticking true to the horror roots. There's some good Wes Craven in with those mutant genes. (Apparently Boone pitched a trilogy for the New Mutants, each one having a different type of horror. I dig that.)

Not really? New Mutants had a lot of horror vibes back in the day. A film of them in that genre makes a lot of sense.

I think part of the problem with this possibly breaking out is actually the bronies. For... well, for worse, really, they've achieved an air about them that's pretty toxic for any other possibly curious adults from viewing it. I mean, I still watch and enjoy the show, even though it's more of a background noise thing, but, jeez, the fan culture is so bad I really don't do anything beyond that. Which is kinda sad, because it's pretty impressive how much they've resisted catering directly to the bronies. We could see some really strange weekend breakdowns, though. Like, possibly large Thursday previews (if they exist), when the hardcore bronies come out, and then an otherwise weak Friday matinee period (because school), with some strong Friday evenings (for bronies again), good Saturday and Sunday Matinees, but possibly weaker evenings for those as the hardcore fans would be sated.

So, I haven't seen the movie. I'm not a horror fan. But I'm glad people are enjoying it. However, I do dig nice box office runs, I thought I'd plug It into my Simple Stupid Box Office Projector. Especially since Wonder Woman has wound down and I want something exciting to track, at least until the holidays. Maybe we'll get some other nice films to look at in the next couple of months, but right now, It is definitely King. Anyhoo, if anyone doesn't know, my projector is an incredibly straight forward spreadsheet. It just takes the most recent week, and spits out exactly what it would do over the next sixteen weeks if they all had the very same drop, then adds that to the previous total, if any. These are not predictions, I must stress. For one, it would be ludicrous to expect a film to have the same drop every week, even if it's in a period of the year that's relatively holiday free, as we're looking at now. But it does give us a rough idea of what sort of drops would be required to get to some benchmarks. On with the show! In its first week, It pulled in $158.7m, which is actually the fourth biggest of the year, between the $163.1m for Spider-Man: Homecoming and the $147.8m for Wonder Woman. It had a bigger opening weekend than the two of those, too, but it doesn't have the benefit of summer weekdays. But it is definitely off to an excellent start. Projecting out from the first week is a bit fraught, because preview numbers throw things off. The second weekend drop tends to be larger because of that, which means the second week drop will be bigger, followed by some stabilization. The stabilization may be offset by theater loss, but that's usually only for films that are already doing poorly. Theaters don't like to keep the chaff around. They do like winners. It is a winner. I'm not sure what it would take to become the biggest movie of the year. A reasonable assumption would peg The Last Jedi in the 700m range. It could go much higher, and possibly slightly lower (though not MUCH lower, right?) Still for It to end up north of $700m in 16 weeks, it would need 22% drops. Let's just keep that on the table until we know how weekend 2 is going to fall. However, to just be the biggest movie of the year SO FAR, it only needs to best the $504m of Beauty and the Beast. That's just sixteen 31% drops away! That is not likely, especially since horror tends to drop slightly on the larger side, but it has a chance. The 510m or so it would earn would be just shy of The Sixth Sense's adjusted total, which isn't any sort of adjusted record for a horror film, since both The Exorcist and Jaws adjust to well over $900m, but it's the biggest in semi-recent history. Moving down the yearly list, we have the biggest movie of the summer, and It's studio-mate Wonder Woman, she o' the magnificent legs. Wondy's run isn't quite finished yet, and she might eke out another million or two when all is said and done, but regardless, if It can pull 38% drops, It will end up past $417m, comfortably ahead of Wonder Woman (And, coincidentally, ahead of Toy Story 3, if you want a creepy movie about the loss of childhood innocence.) The $400m mark allows for slightly larger drops, between 39-40%. The Passion of the Christ has the all time record for an R-rated film, at $370.8m. In order to best that, It would need to get just slightly better than 43% drops. WB's biggest R-Rated venture is American Sniper. 45% drops puts Pennywise ahead of Chris Kyle, landing around $352m Flat 50% drops would land It at $317m. At 53% drops, It just misses on the triple century mark, requiring some shenanigans to get the last 550k. 54% drops are enough to land It just ahead of The Sixth Sense' actual total. And 60% drops still get It to $265m, which lands It ahead of Jaws. So there you have It. This is a pretty basic overview, but we really don't know what sort of staying power It's going to have. If you see that second weekend come anywhere close to the 50% mark, I would not doubt that It will find a final tally in the mid-to-upper $300s. I'll update again next week!

Rupert Gregson Williams had a pretty lackluster list of credits, but he knocked the score for WW out of the park. Jenkins seems able to get people to deliver their best.

@Shawn!

Yeah, fucking around with questions and placements for things further down on the list, especially for new releases that don't have an announced theater count, is super annoying. It seemed like there were at least a couple times every week where I just threw my hands in the air and said "whatever".

I've been waffling on doing the game again. I really didn't enjoy this summer. But slimming down the preseason to just the predicts could help a lot.

Part A: 1. Will Wind River make more than #3.5M? 1000 Yes 2. Will Dunkirk make more than $3M? 2000 Yes 3. WIll Spiderman increase more than 62.5% on Saturday? 3000 No 4. Will Dark Tower stay above All Saints? 4000 Yes 5. Will Nut Job drop more than 25% this weekend? 5000 No 6. Will Wonder Woman make more than 35% of its weekend gross on Saturday? 1000 Yes 7. Will Birth of a Dragon Stay above Girl's Trip? 2000 No 8. Will the Big Sick have a PTA above $925? 3000 No 9. Logan Lucky make more than $1.75M on Saturday? 4000 No 10. How many films will make more than $4M this weekend? 5000 Four 11. Will Leap have a better PTA than Annabelle? 1000 No 12. Will an Inconvenient Sequel drop more than 50%? 2000 Yes 13. Will Pirates stay above GOTG2? 3000 Yes 14. Will Terminator 3D's PTA be at least half of Close Encounters'? 4000 No 15. Will this weekend even happen? 5000 No. We're now stuck in a timeless place of predicting the summer game for all eternity, ever waiting to cross the end of the game event horizon, but never able to reach it. Frozen, liminal, in a hell of our own creation. Bonus: 15/25 2000 16/25 3000 17/25 5000 18/25 7000 19/25 10000 20/25 15000 21/25 20,000 22/25 25,000 23/25 33,000 24/25 40,000 25/25 50,000 NO PART B FOR YOU Part C: There will be 6 films to place and points are expanded because traditionally people haven't scored well here: 1. The Hitman's Bodyguard 3. Wind River 5. Leap! 8. Hazio Como Hombre 11. Birth of the Dragon 15. Wonder Woman Because I realised bonuses are stupid... 1/6 4,000 2/6 10,000 3/6 18,000 4/6 25,000 5/6 36,000 6/6 - 50,000

Part A: 1. Will Close Encounters make more than $1.5M? 1000 No 2. Will Tulip Fever make more than $1.5M? 2000 No 3. Will Close Encounters and Tulip Fever combine to more than #3M? 3000 No 4. Will Hitman's Bodyguard make more $7.5M? 4000 No 5. Will Annabelle drop less than 27.5%? 5000 Yes 6. Will Despicable Me increase? 1000 No 7. Will Leap stay in the top 3? 2000 No 8. Will Logan Lucky stay above Dunkirk? 3000 Yes 9. Will Wonder Woman increase more on Sunday? 4000 I don't understand this question, but No? 10. Will at least 5 of the top 10 either increase or drop less than 20%? 5000 Yes 11. Will Hazlo Como Hombre have a PTA stay above $4,000? 1000 Yes 12. Will Viceroy's House have a PTA above $12,000? 2000 Yes 13. Will Terminator 2 3D be at least 1% of the way to $100M ($1M) by the end of Friday? 3000 No 14. Will Spider-Man make more than $2M? 4000 Yes 15. Will Apes stay above Atomic Blonde? 5000 Yes 16. Will Girl's Trip have a PTA above $1000? 1000 Yes 17. Will any film in the top 12 decrease more than 10% on Sunday? 2000 Yes 18. Will Cars increase more than 400% on Friday? 3000 Yes 19. Will any film in the top 12 increase more than 70% on Saturday? 4000 Yes 20. Will Hazlo Como Hombre increase on Sunday? 5000 Yes 21. Will there be any 'New Entries' (anything highlighted yellow) in the top 10 this weekend? 1000 Yes 22. Will Detroit drop more than 50%? 2000 No 23. Will Guardians stay above 47 metres down? 3000 No 24. Will some cinema chain decide to show badger wrestling or something equally stupid at 25.6 locations and thus BOM decide that should qualify as a film for its box office tallies? 4000 Oh, god, I didn't even look at the results from last weekend until doing these questions, so why the hell wouldn't it happen, now. 25. Will you come back for winter game? Or have I crushed your spirit into the dust? 5000 I'm waffling on it, to be honest. This summer became kind of a drag, and not just because of the unexciting box office results. Bonus: 15/25 2000 16/25 3000 17/25 5000 18/25 7000 19/25 10000 20/25 15000 21/25 20,000 22/25 25,000 23/25 33,000 24/25 40,000 25/25 50,000 Part B: The top 3 predictions will score points as follows: Closest: Within 1% - 15,000, Within 2,5% - 12000, Within 5% 9,000, Within 10% - 6000 Outside 10% - 3000 points 2nd Closest: Within 1% - 12,000, Within 2,5% - 10000, Within 5% 7,000, Within 10% - 4000 Outside 10% - 2000 points 3rd Closest: Within 1% - 10,000, Within 2,5% - 8000, Within 5% 5,000, Within 10% - 2000 Outside 10% - 1000 points 1. What will Close Encounters make for its 3 day OW? 1.38m 2. What will The Dunkirk's Saturday gross be? 1.37m 3. What will Cars 3's percentage change be? +1470% Part C: There will be 6 films to place and points are expanded because traditionally people haven't scored well here: 2. Annabelle: Creation 4. Logan Lucky 7. Spider-Man: Homecoming 9. The Emoji Movie 11. Girl's Trip 14. Close Encounters of the Third Kind Because I realised bonuses are stupid... 1/6 4,000 2/6 10,000 3/6 18,000 4/6 25,000 5/6 36,000 6/6 - 50,000

Cars 3. Why not.

Part A: 1. Will Leap Open to more than $4M? 1000 Yes 2. Will All Saints open to more than $4M? 2000 No 3. Will Birth of the Dragon open to more than $2.5M? 3000 Yes 4. Will the top 3 New Entries combine to more than $11M? 4000 No 5. Will any new entry open in the top 3? 5000 Yes 6. Will Dunkirk drop less than 35%? 1000 No 7. Will Detroit drop more than 62.5%? 2000 Yes 8. Will Nut Job above Spiderman? 3000 No 9. Will 4 animated films be in the top 15? 4000 Yes 10. Will Good Time make more than $1M this weekend? 5000 Yes 11. Will A Taxi Driver drop less than 20% this weekend? 1000 12. Will A Gentleman have a PTA above $2,200? 2000 Yes 13. Will Cars 3 have a PTA above $800? 3000 Yes 14. Will Hitman's Bodyguard make more than $4.75M on Saturday? 4000 No 15. Will Terminator 2 3D make more than Blackhat in China this weekend? 5000 I think the two films will tie in China this weekend. Next weekend, however, T2 is going to go buck wild. Bonus: 9/15 5000 10/15 8000 11/15 12,000 12/15 16,000 13/15 20,000 14/15 24,000 15/15 30,000 Part B: The top 3 predictions will score points as follows: Closest: Within 1% - 15,000, Within 2,5% - 12000, Within 5% 9,000, Within 10% - 6000 Outside 10% - 3000 points 2nd Closest: Within 1% - 12,000, Within 2,5% - 10000, Within 5% 7,000, Within 10% - 4000 Outside 10% - 2000 points 3rd Closest: Within 1% - 10,000, Within 2,5% - 8000, Within 5% 5,000, Within 10% - 2000 Outside 10% - 1000 points 1. What will Leap make for its 3 day OW? $4.87m 2. What will be the combined gross of the three highest new entries (no expansions allowed)? $10.23m 3. What will Nut Job's PTA be? $872 Part C: There will be 6 films to place and points are expanded because traditionally people haven't scored well here: 1. The Hitman's Bodyguard 3. Leap! 5. Wind River 8. All Saints 10. Spider-Man: Homecoming 15. Kidnap Because I realised bonuses are stupid... 1/6 4,000 2/6 10,000 3/6 18,000 4/6 25,000 5/6 36,000 6/6 - 50,000