BadAtGender

I need my victories where I can take them, since I've been shit at the SOTMs.

Huh. That is... surprising.

Still sad I missed the roadshow.

That's a weird decade of death. The Terminal, Charlie Wilson's War, The Da Vinci Code, The Polar Express, Angels & Demons, and Toy Story 3 all happened in that span. They may not all have been critical successes, but they did pull in the money pretty well. Probably more accurate to say that 2011 and 2012 were bad, but that's not uncommon for actors to have a year or two here and there that's below par.

Oh, since I just thought to check it. The 1985 reissue of ET never got to the #1 spot. It debuted at #2, but failed to top the third weekend of Back to the Future. The 80s had some great box office runs. It was another world.

You can add to that: Empire Strikes Back Special Edition (Star Wars Special Edition) ET actually wasn't #1 at the box office when it became the all time champion. But several movies did knock it out of the #1 spot: The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (weekend 7), Friday the 13th Part III (weekend 10), An Officer and a Gentlemen (weekend 13), Amityville II: The Possession (weekend 16), An Officer and a Gentlemen (again, in weekend 18), First Blood (weekend 20), and finally The Toy (weekend 27). The Toy was passed in weekend 28 by Tootsie, which would hold onto the #1 spot for 13 straight weekends, until March of 1983. During that span, sometime in January, ET finally passed Star Wars for the #1 spot.

I'm glad we have a consensus agreement.

It needs to be closer than $50m for it to be worth the cost of a push. Probably a lot closer.

Last year we were wondering where the marketing for Home was and predicting an opening in the 20m-30m range. It doubled that. I think it's like that Fox/DWA has gotten very targeted in their marketing efforts, which may make it seem invisible to some people, but has specific awareness that is high enough that it doesn't matter.

Easter works very well for them. They aren't going to shift away from it.

Because people don't always agree? You have to accept that there's going to be divisive opinions in critical analysis. Sometimes a film that everyone hates will get a positive review. Sometimes one that everyone loves will get a negative. Inside Out and MMFR and Selma and Boyhood all got negative reviews. Not many, sure, but enough that it's clear they were not truly universally beloved. And that's fine. The people who wrote those reviews (or the positive one for NOTN) are free to have that opinion. You're free to disagree. It would be boring if every RT score was either 100% or 0%.

Couple points of clarification? What does "under" mean for question 4? It's the only one that isn't dealing with a dollar value and is likely to cause confusion. (I suppose you could alter it to just ask for the second weekend straight, which would effectively be the same thing and remove any ambiguity.) What does "15th placed film domestic" mean for question 11? Does that mean the film that is at the 15th spot for 2016 at the point the game ends? Or the film that is in the 15th spot for the context of the game? (Or, I suppose, something entirely different?) Good SOTM. I like it. The structure encourages playing.

That's the problem. There's no context to have any clue about when it might work better or not. It's basically a stopped clock: it might be right twice a day, but without any other information, you have no idea when that actually is. If you're only going in after the fact and saying "my prediction was right based on such and such things" but you're not accounting for all the times when it's wrong based on those same factors, then you haven't built a good prediction model. I don't find other pre-release tracking particularly useful, either, because it's all hidden and proprietary. How are they getting their information? What goes into those calculations? We don't know, so it could be a very finely tuned piece of software or it could be a bunch of interns throwing darts. TFA was fairly exceptional because they did start releasing more information, stating how big the actual presales were and so forth. I'm waiting for them to do that for every movie, not just the biggest blockbusters. Until that happens, I'm going to view things like the MT %s, Fandango Pulse, and so forth with extreme skepticism. If you don't know what the tool you're using actually does, then don't use the damn tool.

That's incredibly misguided, at least until they start telling us volume as well as percentages.

I wonder if it's going to effectively set the game.

1. Will a new film be number 1 this weekend? YES 2. Will Revenant stay in the top 3? 3000 YES 3. Will Norm of the North finish above Daddy's Home? NO 4. How many new entries will be in the top 5 this weekend? 2000 TWO 5. Will The Forest drop more than 63%? NO 6. Will the Big short have the lowest weekend drop of any film that decreases from last weekend (If it randomly increases then that makes this an auto yes)? YES 7. Will Good Dinosaur stay above Creed? NO 8. How many different best picture/best director (only 1 is needed not both) Oscar Nominees will finish in the top 18? 3000 FOUR 9. Will the Hateful 8 have a better Saturday gross than Alvin? NO 10. Will the Revenant's Total gross overtake Sisters' total gross by the end of the weekend? YES 11. 13 Hours will be Michael Bay's 12th film according to Mojo. Where will it's opening weekend rank alongside his other films? 2000 9th 12. Will Brooklyn have a better percentage change than Spotlight this weekend? NO 13. Will Danish Girl stay in the top 20? YES 14. Will the three highest new entries combined gross more than the 3 highest non-new entries combined? NO 15. Will any film drop more than 47% on Sunday? NO 16. Will the Big Short remain in the top 8? 3000 YES 17. Will Spectre stay above the Martian? NO 18. Will Hunger Game's PTA stay above $1200? YES 19. Will any film increase more than 175% on Friday? 2000 YES 20. how many films make more than $10M this weekend? FIVE 21. How many Oscars Nominations should Jem and the Holograms and Mortdecai have received this year? WILL? NONE. SHOULD? ALL OF THEM! 14/21 2000 15/21 3000 16/21 4000 17/21 6000 18/21 8000 19/21 10000 20/21 12000 21/21 15000 Part 2. 1. What will be the combined weekend gross of the Best Picture Nominations? 5000 54.287 2. What will Revenant gross on Friday? 5000 7.812 3. What will Creed's total be by the end of the weekend? 5000 107.312 4. What will be the combined Sunday gross of all the Best Song and best Animated feature Nominations? 5000 103k Positions 2. THE REVENANT 5. DADDY'S HOME 7. THE BIG SHORT 9. SISTERS 12. ALVIN & THE CHIPMUNKS: THE ROAD CHIP 14. SPOTLIGHT

Avatar got a ton of repeat business. So did Titanic. So did ANH. So, generally, did every single film that's among the biggest of all time. Or the biggest in any given year.

This production isn't rushed at all.

Just to make sure: we're looking only at the 3-day numbers, right?

While I know I'm dropping hard in the standings due to not doing anything for that SOTM, I can't help but be a little relieved that I didn't make some bad bets and lose out big.

Pretty much guaranteed that IO will win. It would be a huge shock if it didn't. I'm rather happy that they've selected four under the radar choices for the other noms, though.

Ride Along 2 - 47m 13 Hours - 35m Norm of the North - 12m

Thank god for abstain.

Yeah, no way in hell this comes in below 900m. For it to do that, its late legs would have to be as absurdly bad as its first few weeks were absurdly good. Unfair for what? December releases tend to have better legs. TS3's performance was pretty legendary for a summer opener. To get a Friday opener in any season that had better legs than it, you have to drop down to Inside Out on the all time OW list. The next after that is, I think, The Passion of the Christ. As it stands, Baumer is correct that the legs for TFA are looking really good. To be big and sustained takes a lot. If it gets to 940, it will have had better legs than TS3, which is remarkable in any season, and moreso for a film that set the OW record.

Abstain.