BadAtGender

It's possible it would have gone on for quite a while, but it's also likely that Disney did the HV release right at the iron is hottest moment. If it had been delayed for a couple months, would it have been so record breaking? Arguably, Disney sacrificed a few million of box office for several tens of millions of HV gross.

I saw the latest trailer before Moana, and, wow, this looks like a complete mess of narrative. It might be fun and have catchy music, but it does not look good.

Moana is a good movie.

Okay. Wow.

Moana time.

True enough. Frozen looked pretty standard for about three weeks. It only turned into a monster when the Christmas holidays hit and it was like "nope, not gonna stop this train". However, part of that was Frozen's ability to become the pop cultural sensation of the season. I don't see Moana getting the same chance, just because Star Wars is Star Wars. Even if I think that Moana can probably weather the competition just fine since its quality is so high.

It only had a bigger opening day because its previews were 1.4m higher. Frozen had a bigger true Wednesday, by about 800k.

Possibly. Last year it seemed that at least part of the reason TGD didn't do as well as expected was it was completely overshadowed by TFA, as if Disney wasn't able to focus on two tentpoles at the same time. I wonder if there's a bit of that going on here, although not to the same degree. Star Wars is Disney's prime franchise, and Rogue One is kinda an important sell because of it's spinoff status. So is it possibly sucking up some of the push that could have been given to Moana. (Frozen, we'll remember, didn't have a Disney tentpole to contend with a month later.) Huh. I had thought that Tangled had sub-par late legs, but just glancing at the weekend drops, it seemed to hold up okay. What's actually going to be interesting now is how Moana will compare to BH6, which also had a mid-50s OW and finished in the 220m range. At the time, I criticized Disney's release, because it seemed like Thanksgiving was a much better release date than early November. (IIRC, my estimate was that they left at least 20m on the table, and possibly a lot more.) If Moana, with a better reception, isn't able to do better, perhaps it doesn't particularly matter?

That's about a million less than I think most people expected for Moana. I wonder what's happening. A marketing slip-up?

Hey, a tie for 4th. And we all know @chasmmi doesn't have what it takes to keep in the race, so it's really me sitting alone in 4th. Meanwhile, @Grand Moff Tele? Where you at, old man?

Current top 2016: Zootopia Arrival Kubo & the Two Strings Ghostbusters Star Trek: Beyond Finding Dory Deadpool And I dunno. Mag7, BFG, BvS, KFP3, and Suicide Squad are all shuffling around in there. There's a lot of stuff I haven't seen, though. Moana will probably be this weekend. And I'd like to see Trolls, The Jungle Book, Hacksaw, Bad Moms, Fantastic Beasts, Pete's Dragon, Storks, The Nice Guys, Hell or High Water, Eye in the Sky, and several movies I'm pretty sure are just bad, but I'm interested to see how they're bad.

Man, if Rth typoed that Trolls number and messed up my Winter Game answers...

While there might be a vote split, that just means that the ultimate winner is up in the air, not that it allows Kubo to sneak in for a win. Because we'd honestly probably have a vote breakdown something like this: Disney Pic 1: 21% Disney Pic 2: 19% Disney Pic 3: 15% Kubo: 5% Indie Pic: 1% Didn't vote: 39% (If we get only two Disney pics and two indie pics, then raise the Disney votes by ~10% and the new one gets another 1%) Academy Voters have a lot of films to see, and they're primarily going to be interested in actually seeing the films that are in the top of the line categories, not making sure they'll have seen the fourth most popular animation entry. There simply won't be enough of them for Kubo to get a win. Honestly, any of the three Disney pics could get the win. Zootopia has phenomenally good reviews and a rather prescient message. If it does manage to sneak a screenplay nod, that could play a lot in its favor. (Unlikely at this point, but there's an outside shot.) Dory has very good reviews and it's by far the biggest in terms of box office, which often does matter for this award. (More random eyeballs have seen it.) Moana has excellent reviews, even if it's not QUITE as good as Zoo, and it's got that most recent release playing for it. And there's the fact that it's got Lin-Manuel Miranda's PEGOT riding on it, so that could have a trickle-down effect. Right now it's a toss-up. I'm still leaning Zootopia, but if Moana manages to catch some lightning and become more of a phenomenon, it probably gets the edge.

Pot A: Moana Gross Pot B: Underworld OW Pot C: (bigger drop is the winner) Fifty Shades 2nd Weekend Drop Pot D: Why Him Total Gross Pot E: Sing Worldwide Gross Pot F: (Win or lose doesn't matter, just number of noms) La La Land Oscar Nominations

All questions are related to the top 12, are for the 3 day weekend and are worth 1000 points unless otherwise stated. 1. Will Moana open to more than $55m? Yes 2. Will Moana open to more than $65m? 3000 No 3. Will Moana open to more than $75m? No 4. Will Allied open to more than $12m? No 5. Will Allied open to more than $15m? 2000 No 6. Will Bad Santa Open to more than $12.5M? No 7. Will Bad Santa open to more than $15M? No 8. Will Rules don't apply open to less than $5M? 2000 Yes 9. Will Rules don't apply open to less than $3M? Yes 10. Will the four biggest new Openers combine to more than $100M? No 11. Will the four biggest new Openers have a combined total gross of more than $140M by the end of Sunday? No 12. Will Lion have a PTA above $20,000? 13. Will at least 2 films in the top 10, increase by more than 10%? 3000 No 14. Will Trolls remain in the top 5? No 15. Will Dr. Strange cross $200m by the end of the weekend? Yes 16. Will fantastic Beasts drop less than 47.5%? 2000 Yes 17. Will Hacksaw Ridge stay in the top 8? Yes 18. Will Inferno have a weekend below $200k? 3000 Yes 19. Will Boo stay above Jack Reacher? No 20. Will the 4D showing of Moana give us the chance to smell what Maoi is cooking? In the inevitable re-release in 20 years, sure. Bonus: 14/20 2000 15/20 3000 16/20 5000 17/20 7000 18/20 10000 19/20 14000 20/20 20000 Part 2: Closest predictor wins 5000 points (Added bonus: If prediction is within 10% win 6000; 5% 7000; 2.5% 9000; 1% 12000) 1. Predict Moana's total gross at end of Sunday. $84m 2. Predict The accountant's percentage change (If direction is not stated, I will assume the prediction is for it to drop not increase). -60% 3. What will be the difference between Bad Santa's Friday gross and Almost Christmas' 3 day gross? $456,789 Part 3: Predict the films that place in the following positions: 3. Doctor Strange 5. Arrival 8. Hacksaw Ridge 10. The Edge of Seventeen 12. Loving 16. Dear Zindaji

GB is still in my top 5 for the year.

I want someone to make a movie starring Haley Bennett, Jennifer Lawrence, Ethan Hawke, and Kevin Dillon. On occasion they'll just switch roles between scenes. The trick will be to see if anyone notices.

It's probably not going to get the Thanksgiving opening record if it's under 16.

Yeah, by about a million.

Hmm. 15.5 would be a 12.9 true Wednesday.

This, basically. Also, the quality of the animation craft is going to matter a lot. Ghibli is a safe bet because they pour a huge amount of time and effort into their films. The rest of the anime industry tends to fall a bit short in comparison. (and despite the raves, I think it will need to be a not insignificant step up from Shinkai's previous films to have a shot.)

I wonder if it's bigger than Frozen, sans previews.

1. What will Dr Strange's total be at the end of the game? 210m 2. What will Arrival's total be by the end of the game? 70m 3. What will Passengers' 3 day OW be? 20m 4. What will Underworld's Second weekend percentage drop be? -40% 5. What will be the difference in gross between Hacksaw and Allied by the end of the game (No need to state which is higher)? 10m 6. What will La La Land's multiplier be from it's (9th December limited) opening weekend? 40x 7. What will Moana's 12 day total be (The end of its second Sunday)? 100m 8. How many days will Fantastic Beasts make more than $1M? 21 9. What will Sing's Opening Day including Previews be? 15m 10. How much will Rogue One make in Thursday previews? 15m

Wow. Considering that it's only a single screen, I'm impressed. Seattle represent.

Maybe in that reality, 2016 isn't a complete shit show.