BadAtGender

Part A: 1. Will King Arthur Open to more than $20M? 1000 No 2. Will Snatched Open to more than $20M? 2000 No 3. Will King Arthur open to more than Snatched? 3000 No 4. Will Lowriders open to more than $1m? 4000 Yes 5. Will King Arthur and Snatched's combined 3 Day total come to more than GOTG2's combined Friday and Saturday? 5000 No 6. Will Boss Baby drop less than 30% 1000 Yes 7. Will Baahubali drop more than 65% 2000 Yes 8. Will How to be a Latin lover stay in the top 6? 3000 No 9. Will The Promise drop more than 75% 4000 No 10. Will The Circle have a better weekend percentage drop than Fate of the Furious? 5000 No 11. Will any new opener stay in second place for every day of the weekend? 1000 Yes 12. Will Absolutely anything have a PTA above $4,000? 2000 No 13. Will The Wall have a PTA above $6,000? 3000 No 14. Will GOTG2 drop more than 60% for the weekend? 4000 No 15. Will Liam Neeson get confused and try to rescue Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn? 5000 Only in the sequel. 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 Snatched make for its 3 day OW? $19.32m 2. What will Lowrider's PTA be? $4219 3. What will be the difference in gross between Arthur and Snatched's weekend totals (no need to say which is higher)? $1.27m Part C: There will be 6 films to place and points are expanded because traditionally people haven't scored well here: 2. Snatched 6. Beauty and the Beast 8. The Wall 11. Gifted 14. Going in Style 18. Get Out 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 Deadline is Thursday May 11th at 11:59pm

You'd prefer the lesser Hemsworth to ?

Everyone is all about the existing franchises and stuff that the general audience is predisposed to know about and shit. So of course something that's based off a comic that has basically no presence in the US is doomed from the getgo.

It did kinda predict the whole "fuck it if we don't have a good idea for the third act" plan that most recent blockbusters seem to epitomize. So I suppose there's something about being ahead of its time?

Well, I hope this weekend isn't indicative of the whole game, because while I did edit my predictions, I apparently didn't make the correct changes to GotG.

*insert CJohn-esque rant about Paramount here*

When the fuck did it change?

Yeah. Last year I got an absurdly high week 0 score, which really encouraged me not to bandwagon with everyone else who edited to raise their CACW predictions. If Baumer does the same this year, well, good on him.

I saw this as a double feature with the first film, so it was interesting to see it in contrast. GotG 1 is a film that has a whole lot of potential, but it squanders a lot of it on poor storytelling choices. It was the film that served to introduce the richness of Cosmic Marvel, but instead it watered down the Kree, Nova Corps, and so forth to pretty generic alien groups. Compared to how good a lot of the stuff in the Abnett and Lanning comics were ten years ago, it was a let down. Ronan, in particular, is a paper thin villain built on what is a rather intriguing and captivating character in the comics. If you want a nearly pitch-perfect antagonist who's a Lawful Good Paladin, Ronan is your guy. The generic religious purity zealot in the film is just so boring. Lee Pace was wasted. But I digress. In short: GotG 1 is a fun movie that doesn't live up to its potential. GotG 2? Well, it's a hell of a lot hokier. There isn't as much potential built into the framework, and they've weirdly decided not to expand on some of the things shown in the first film. (No Kree, Nova Corps, or Knowhere to be found.) Still, despite that, they seem to have pretty well maximized on their potential. Two things particularly stand out. First, Ego (played by Kurt Russell acting as the Kurt Russell-iest that he possibly could) is probably the first Marvel villain since Loki to actually reach his potential. Much like Loki, his character is intertwined into a hero, so that there's personal, emotional stake to what happens. Now, he's not a great villain, but all things considered, he's a hell of a lot better than we could expect. Of course, Marvel being Marvel, they promptly killed him in the film, so that we won't see any further development. Second, this is the first Marvel film since, I think, Thor 2 where the third act didn't suck. So many Marvel films blow their wad in the second act and then don't seem to have any clear ideal how to keep the film going for another half an hour. Not so, here. GotG 2 keeps trucking along nicely. The stakes are escalated sufficiently, without completely removing the impetus for character involvement. But it's still hokey: the big danger is a gelatinous ooze growing on each planet, which doesn't really strike to the core of cool or scary. (Personal beef: the shots of the ooze on Earth, they could have sold them a bit better with a very brief Avengers cameo. Iron Man or someone showing up, taking a few shots, and then going "Yeah, I'm going to call in the team for this one." Thirty seconds and you only need one line and perhaps no actual shots from RDJ.) In the negative region, there are a lot of moments where the humor undermines the film and characters. The MCU is a quippy franchise, and that happens in spades here. And while just about every joke lands (there were a lot of laughs, even from me), I couldn't help but wonder if Elizabeth Debicki's Ayesha would have been better served if the Sovereigns weren't a bunch of video game pilots complete with arcade sounds. Also, as is often the case for the MCU, the direction is strictly journeyman level. Gunn isn't a bad director, but there's nothing great here, either. Overall, it's a fun way to spend a couple hours. It doesn't really break any new ground (indeed, one could argue that this is the most deliberately nostalgic of the overwhelmingly nostalgic MCU), but it delivers well on what it has. 3/5? 4/5? Somewhere in there.

Correcting The Circle to Latin Lover alone would be worth it, just to remove that failure from the record.

Week 1: Yes.

Seems like I am kind of creating a tradition of sorts to kick off SOTM season with this style of question. Often though, it is not a wielder of big points, so I think I may try to tweak the risk/reward just a little... (There is now a part PART A: Below are 10 films due for release between the start of the game and June 16th, along with their predicted total grosses according to http://pro.boxoffice.com/long-range-forecast-cars-3-rough-night-eyez/ 1. King Arthur - $67M 2. Lowriders - $15.3M LOWER 3. Snatched - $85M LOWER 4. Diary of a Wimpy Kid - $32M 5. Everything Everything - $26M 6. It Comes at Night - $39M HIGHER 7. Captain Underpants - $93.5M HIGHER 8. All Eyes on Me - $49M 9. Rough Night - $80M HIGHER 10. Cars 3 - $180M HIGHER All you have to do is predict whether the predictions above are too high, or too low. You can choose to predict for as many or as few films as you wish. If you wish to go further, you could also choose to wager that a film will make less than half or more than double the above predictions. These predictions have bigger risks and bigger rewards. Predictions will be scored as follows: Correct High/Low Prediction - 8000 points Correct Double/Half Prediction - 20000 points Incorrect High/Low Prediction - Minus 6000 points Incorrect Double/Half Prediction - Minus 15000 points PART B: Here are 10 questions: 1. Which film not called Lowriders will be the lowest grossing? Everything, Everything 2. Which non-animated film will be the highest grossing? Rough Night 3. Will a non-animated film on that list make the main games Domestic Top 15 list? Yes 4. Will any film double its predicted gross? Yes 5. Will any film fail to reach half of its predicted gross? Yes 6. Will the actual combined total gross for the 10 films be higher or lower than the predicted total gross? Higher 7. Percentage wise, what will be boxoffice.com's best prediction? It Comes at Night 8. Percentage wise, what will be boxoffice.com's worst prediction? Captain Underpants 9. Will 3 or more of these films open in the number 2 position? No 10. Will 2 or more of these films open in 5th or lower? Yes Predictions will be scored as follows: Number of correct answers in Part A x Number of correct answers in Part B x 1000 So if you got 6 correct in part A and 4 correct in part B, you will score: 6 x 4 x 1000 = 24,000 points for part B. There is no risk of losing points in part B. There is also the option to abstain from this question. If you state that you Abstain in this Thread, you will receive 3000 points Any player who does not predict or state abstain in this thread will lose 8000 points The Deadline is Thursday May 4th at 11:59pm (Game start time) Enjoy

I, too, edited my preseasons. For the better? Who knows.

Part A: 1. Will Guardians make more than $130M? 1000 Yes 2. Will Guardians make more than $150M? 2000 Yes 3. WIll Guardians drop more than 15% on Saturday? 3000 Yes 4. Will Guardians make more than 80% of the total gross of all films reported on BOM this weekend? 4000 No 5. Will Friday account for at least 40% of Guardians' weekend gross? 5000 Yes 6. Will Fate of the Furious drop less than 55%? 1000 No 7. Will The Circle drop more than 60%? 2000 Yes 8. Will Latin Lover stay about Baahubali? 3000 Yes 9. Will Boss Baby increase more than 85% on Saturday? 4000 Yes 10. Will the top 11 films all make more than $1M? 5000 Yes 11. Will Gifted's PTA stay above $1,000? 1000 Yes 12. Will Going in Style stay aboe Smurfs? 2000 Yes 13. Will Free Fire make less than $75,000 for the whole weekend? 3000 Yes 14. Will Logan stay above Colossal? 4000 No 15. Will Power Rangers cross $85M by the end of the weekend? 5000 No 16. Will Life have a PTA above $400? 1000 Yes 17. Will Case for Christ have a PTA above $600? 2000 Yes 18. Will CHuck have a PTA aboe $3,000? 3000 Yes 19. Will 3 Generations have a PTA above $7,500? 4000 No 20. Will Ghost in the Shell have a PTA above $500? 5000 Yes 21. Will Guardians' Actuals be Higher than the official final estimates for the weekend on BOM? 1000 Yes 22. Will Fate of the Furious' first Deadline weekend estimate be within 500k of the actual total? 2000 No 23. Will any film in more than 100 theatres drop more than 80%? 3000 Yes 24. Will the whole weekend total of every film be above $185M? 4000 Yes 25. How many Hobbits will ride Groot into battle during Guardians 2? 5000 Having seen it, I can say that (spoiler). Which would make you think (spoiler), and you'd be right. But then there's the fact that (spoiler) and when they (spoiler) on (spoiler), it happens to (spoiler), so that (spoiler) has to (spoiler) with (spoiler). That's not a refutation of (spoiler), but you can kinda see how it would mean that (spoiler), if you look at it a certain way. (Spoiler) will probably lead into (spoiler) in (spoiler). Or, I suppose, four. 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 Guardians 2 make for its 3 day OW? $152.3m 2. What will Baahubali's Saturday gross be? $1.72m 3. What will The Circle's percentage drop be? 64.2% Part C: There will be 6 films to place and points are expanded because traditionally people haven't scored well here: 3. How to Be a Latin Lover 5. Baahubali 2: The Conclusion 8. Going in Style 10. Gifted 13. The Lost City of Z 16. Kong: Skull Island 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

Yeah. 26k isn't a great weekly score. Just need to figure out if I can salvage those points elsewhere.

Fuck! I forgot Cloud Atlas.

Sent. It was kinda tough figuring out which films got into the top 25. There were probably five or ten that could have gotten into the list but I needed to cut them off somewhere.

It's still looking like a good bet to pass a billion OS, which considering the worse exchange rates than existed two years ago, is pretty nifty. The dropoff from F7 is largely expected. I doubt anyone expected it to replicate the 1.5b WW gross. And it pulls in enough that the price tag for the film is completely justified. The Domestic gross is pretty much gravy at this point, considering how it plays overseas. There may not be any films this summer that have a bigger worldwide haul than F8 gets overseas.

It continues the tradition of being the pre-eminent action franchise out there. The set pieces here continue to be amazing, and they really show how to take some hokey concepts and make them really, really work. The New York sequence was wild as shit, and in pretty much any other franchise, it would seem really dumb, but it just works here. Where it falters is from the one factor it couldn't really avoid: the loss of Paul Walker is pretty palpable. In the previous films, he had that right level of regular Joe to him that secured the emotional heart of the films. And, in Tokyo Drift, Lucas Black essentially filled the same role. There isn't anyone doing the same thing here, so even as much as Johnson and Statham step it up and deliver some really enjoyable performances, it doesn't feel quite the same anymore. Still, it's nice to see that Statham gets to really shine. F7 was super fun, but his role was pretty one-note there. Being allowed to really do those action comedy chops he showcased in Spy is great. It's not upper tier for the franchise for emotional heft, but in terms of action spectacle, it's absolutely top notch. 4/5

Looper is great. It has one scene that disturbed me for weeks.

It's probably going to have a bit of confusion, at least domestically. Much like John Carter was criticized for cribbing from Star Wars, even though it was one of the main inspirational properties. Valerian might be in the same boat, sort of. Americans really aren't familiar with the original property, so it might come across as something of a ripoff. Part of that is probably the lack of exposure. In the US, the translations are pretty scattered. I think it's better in the UK, where a publisher has been doing translations of all the graphic albums, but I don't think those are easily available over here. Maybe after the movie, if there's any sort of traction, we might see more comprehensive distribution. Perhaps not on Tintin or Asterix level, but possibly getting closer to that.

SNG wasn't in question, I think. Kon Tiki was.

Shrek 2 opened on a Wednesday. The 128m 5-day pull it had adjusts to about 183m, now. And will probably be a little higher in 2.5 years when Frozen 2 opens. 190-200m-ish? That's probably the upper bound of what we could expect Frozen 2 to hit. I think it's possible, if rather unlikely. Everything would have to swing its way hype-wise to deliver that. (If it does pull such an opening, it's probably cruising past FD for biggest animated film, too.) One possible wrench is Wicked, which opens just prior to Christmas that year. Part of Frozen's zeitgeist was how it tapped into many similar feelings for Wicked. Not specifically the fanbase, per se, though there was overlap. More that it came across as a spiritual successor. We'll have to see what the marketing for Wicked is like, but I expect Universal will be pushing it pretty hard, which may remove Frozen 2's ability to leverage those same feelings.

Isn't Kon Tiki 2013? I've got all the films for consideration. I have to figure out the order, though. It's often a case of "Do I like X or Y better?" and repeat. Still, there are some difficulties. I kinda liked Safety Not Guaranteed, but I don't feel like supporting it because Jurassic World was so fucking terrible.

From what I understand, they rely pretty heavily on the reshoot/redub period to pull their films together into the relatively cohesive product that people dig. Removing that from their toolbox could hurt them immensely.