Wrath

The funny thing about those Deadline numbers? Starting a little before the Derby got back up and running again, I did a weekly thread here in which I asked people to predict how the openers would do and I'd also include all the predicts from the Weekend Predict thread. On average there were probably ~15 people predicting each week (ranging from like 5 to 50). Did it for a couple years, and learned some interesting things. First, none of us were as good individually as we all were on average. I also tracked the mean and median results from our collective predicts, and the median (which did slightly better than the mean) was a more accurate prediction than *anyone* on the site who predicted a decent number of movies (I think I think I set the cut-off at 50, which was like 10-15% of the possible predictions). The only one who gave the median a run for its money was TalismanRing and s/he just barely made it over the minimum cut-off. Second, as much as we like to bash the big sites, they're all genuinely good at this. I also tracked Variety, Deadline, BO.com, and a few other places (which kinda came and went over time) each week using the last predict they made by Thursday night. The little sites were really hit and miss. Most were pretty awful, while one (who's name escapes me but it stopped doing public predicts after about a year) was surprisingly great. And Variety and Deadline were surprisingly strong, consistently beating our median prediction. Not on every single one, obviously, but often enough that there was a clear (if small) gap. But the obvious winner was BO.com. Absolute gold-standard and a step ahead of *everyone* else except that one site who's name escapes me. They were basically neck and neck. Anyway, the point is, for all of their inability to extrapolate and do math, Variety and Deadline are consistently pretty good at estimating OWs.

Nice to see my ability to play defense in this game hasn't abandoned me quite yet.

Wk3 - Nay, good sir. It will not.

1. Will Pikachu Make more than $60M? 1000 YES 2. Will Pikachu make more than $90M? 2000 NO 3. Will Pikachu make more than $75M? 3000 NO 4. Will Pikachu open in 1st place? 4000 NO 5. Will Endgame overtake Avatar by the end of the weekend? 5000 NO 6. Will The Hustle open to more than $14M? 1000 NO 7. Will Poms open to more than $10M? 2000 NO 8. Will the top 3 New Entries combine to more than $100? 3000 NO 9. Will Long Shot drop more than 52%? 4000 NO 10. Will Captain Marvel stay above Breakthrough? 5000 NO 11. Will La Lorona's PTA stay above $950? 1000 NO 12. Will Tolkien have a PTA above $3,250? 2000 NO 13. Will Shazam increase more than 82% on Saturday? 3000 YES 14. Will Endgame overtake Avatar WW by the end of the weekend? 4000 YES 15. Will Pikachu do more or less Detective Work than the combined 5 Batmans that we have had to date? 5000 Much more, but its a really low bar. If you included the old Adam West TV show, I'd say less. 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 Pikachu's OW be? 63M 2. What will Intruder's? -50% 3. What will Dumbo's PTA be? $615 Part 😄 There will be 6 films to place and points are expanded because traditionally people haven't scored well here: 1. Avengers 3. Hustle 5. Long Shot 8. Tolkien 10. Breakthrough 12. Shazam!

A classic. I'll probably be editing this one a lot. 1. Long Shot $50M - Too Low 2. Uglydolls $48M - Too High 3. The Hustle $41M - Too High 4. A Dog's Journey $41.3M - Too High 5. John Wick 3 $106M - Too Low 6. Sun is also a Star $36M - Too High 7. Ma $63M - Too High 8. MIB International $107M - Too Low 9. Shaft $100M - Too High 10. Child's Play 42.5M - Too High PART B: Here are 10 questions: 1. Which film will be the lowest grossing? Ugly Dolls 2. Which film will be the highest grossing without making more than $100M? Long Shot 3. Will exactly two films make the Domestic top 15? No 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 films be higher or lower than the predicted total gross? Lower 7. Percentage wise, what will be boxoffice.com's best prediction? MiB International 8. Percentage wise, what will be boxoffice.com's worst prediction? Shaft 9. Will any of the films open in the number 1 position? Yes 10. Will 3 or more of these films open in 4th or lower? Yes

1. Will Endgame Make more than $160M? 1000 YES 2. Will Endgame make more than $200M? 2000 NO 3. Will Endgame make more than $180M? 3000 NO 4. Will The Intruder Open in 2nd Place? 4000 NO 5. Will the top 4 new entries' combined 3 day OWs total more than Endgame's 2nd Friday? 5000 NO 6. Will UglyDolls make more than Long Shot? 1000 NO 7. Will Captain Marvel drop more than 40%? 2000 NO 8. Will La Llorona stay above Breakthrough? 3000 NO 9. Will Little stay above Dumbo? 4000 NO 10. Will Penguins stay in the top 12? 5000 NO 11. Will Pet Semetary's PTA stay above $450? 1000 NO 12. Will Shazam drop less than 55%? 2000 YES 13. Will Missing Link increase more than 90% on Saturday? 3000 YES 14. Will Endgame cross $2B WW by the end of the weekend? 4000 YES 15. Will Disney pull the rest of its summer slate from the release schedules now because really... what's the point, there's no money left in the world? 5000 MORE! 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. Long Shot? 16M 2. What will be the percentage change for Us? -55% 3. What will Endgame's PTA be? $42k Part 😄 There will be 6 films to place and points are expanded because traditionally people haven't scored well here: 2. Long Shot 4. Ugly Dolls 6. Breakthrough 9. Dumbo 11. Pet Semetary 13. Us

WK2 - Ye..... Maybe? For my brain's sake, I kind of hope it does. Its been popped enough already lately. If it doesn't, TFA is totally toast, though it might well be anyhow. Lets go with Yes.

I think I recognize just about everyone here so for a league name, how about: The Usual Suspects Edit - Alternatively: Screwed by Penguins

What's the prior record? 350-something?

Yeah. It'll be appreciated, really. Like AM&TW, we could all use a palate-cleanser before moving on.

Yeah, but we're the lucky recipients of some great timing. Seriously, what are the odds the MCU would put out 22 movies in a ~10 year period, none of them would be terrible, and 19 of them (including *everything* in the past 5 years) would be good to outstanding. No one's ever told a story like that, and the Potter movies are the only thing I can think of with a quality hit-rate like that. And then they cap it off with a two-movie pair that could at least be argued to have been the best of the lot (IW could arguably have been the very best MCU movie, and EG was in the top 4-5 and had the best done fan-service of any movie I've ever seen). So, yeah. 5 years ago, if you said the MCU cap-stone movie would break all the OW records, I'd have said "Well, sure, it could. IF it pulls off this really unlikely chain of events." It was unlikely they would accomplish it, so I'd have thought the TFA was pretty safe. The surprise isn't that they're breaking the records, the surprise is that they accomplished all the steps needed to be in a position to do it. Once they hit all those home runs, they just had to stick the landing, and they did. It didn't break the records, but I still have no explanation for Jurassic World.

It worked out. I bought two copies so neither of us had to wait. ❤️

Exactly. Check out Fandango or whatever and see how many theaters are already sold out around you. If its anything like here, the range is probably surprisingly easy to work out. I mean, if ~80% of all available seats are sold, there isn't a lot of uncertainty.

Deathly Hallows was crazy in all aspects. When the book came out, it came out and midnight and my wife made me go stand in line for an hour to buy the freaking thing. It was actually kind of fun because the line went all the way around the block. A bunch of folks had camped out and were wearing costumes.

Of course! As a final word of advice, feel free to look at what other people have posted (but remember they'll probably edit before the deadline), and beware that it may end up taking longer than you expect to get things sorted out (especially since its your first time). I usually spend at least a few hours working on it, though different people approach it in different ways. Also, its definitely something you get a feel for as time goes on. The first time I entered, I did pretty well on the weekly stuff and was clinging to a spot in the top 10 before they did the final scoring on the pre-season stuff. I crashed and burned, and think I ended up in like 23rd. But then the next time I understood it all a bit better and came in like 8th or something, and then a year or so after that I finally won one. Have fun, don't get discouraged, and bear in mind that if anyone tells you a particular chunk of points doesn't really matter that they're probably trolling you.

Welcome! The games are a lot of fun (for the right sort of personality) so I hope you're able to get an entry in before the deadline tonight (just before midnight on Thursday, I'm not entirely sure which timezone. US Pacific, maybe?) in... 14 hours, perhaps. The biggest source of points are the preseason lists which you do here: Just copy paste the blank one in the first post for the formatting, then fill it in as best you can. Folks will be posting new entries and editing their numbers until late tonight. The numbers can seem dauntingly large, but you'd be surprised at how close the results can be. A couple years ago, they gave people who helped with the scoring +1 bonus point (out of like 3+ million) and at one point late in the final scoring one of the +1 points actually served as a tie-breaker. The rest of the game are the weekly questions, the Spur of the Moment (SotM's), and Question of the week. Each individual set of questions isn't worth a ton of points, but they add up over the course of the game. They're in the same area as the Preseason Prediction Thread. Its kind fun to see how different people are particularly good or bad at different things. Historically, I've done pretty well on the top 15 Domestic chart and the SotM's, but I'm absolute trash at the weekly questions. I'm somehow better at predicting how movies will do ~3 months before they open than I am at predicting it the week they open. I tried just flat-out copying people who were better at it than me, but each week I seemed to randomly pick the person who was about to have a terrible week so even that didn't work. Ah well.

Part A: 1. Will Avengers Open to more than $260M? 1000 YES 2. Will Avengers Open to more than $300M? 2000 YES 3. Will Avengers Open to more than $280M? 3000 YES 4. Will Avengers Saturday increase from its true Friday (excluding Thursday previews)? 4000 YES 5. Will Will Avengers' make more than 82.5% of all the box office of every film reported by BOM when actuals are released? 5000 NO 6. Will La Larona drop less than 56%? 1000 NO 7. Will Pet Semetary stay above Us? 2000 YES 8. Will Avengers Endgame overtake Dumbo's Domestic total on its opening day? 3000 YES 9. Will any film in the top 15 drop more than 65%? 4000 YES 10. Will Hellboy's PTA stay above $750? 5000 NO 11. Will Little increase more than 40% on Saturday? 1000 NO 12. Will Shazam drop more than 33% on Sunday? 2000 YES 13. Will the White Crow have a PTA above $12k? 3000 NO 14. Will After stay above PEnguins? 4000 YES 15. Will Captain Marvel decrease less than 20%? 5000 YES 16. Will Shazam's domestic total on Saturday be closer to the domestic total of Dumbo or How to Train Your Dragon? 1000 Dumbo 17. Will Pet Semetary have the worst PTA in the top 10? 2000 YES (though I'm assuming the question holds even if Pet Semetary drops out of the top 10) 18. Will Breakthrough overtake Hellboy DOmestically by the end of the weekend? 3000 YES 19. How many films will make more than $2.5M this weekend? 4000 7 20. Will Thanos ultimately be defeated by the power of friendship? 5000 Of course. We all knew he was secretly a brony. Bonus: 12/20 3000 13/20 5000 14/20 8000 15/20 12000 16/20 16,000 17/20 20,000 18/20 26,000 19/20 32,000 20/20 40,000 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 Avengers make for its 3 day OW? $300,000,001 2. What will Dumbo's Sunday gross be? 1.3M 3. What will Missing Link's PTA be for the 3 day weekend? $885 Part 😄 There will be 6 films to place and points are expanded because traditionally people haven't scored well here: 1. Pet Semetary! Huge upset! Ok, no, not really. Avengers: End game 3. Captain Marvel 6. Dumbo 8. US 9. Missing Link 11. Hellboy

That might have been the most insightful thing Dana Stevens has written in a superhero movie review. It went something like... she thought CM was only ok, but she was really glad we'd gotten to the point that not only could we make good superhero movies with female leads, but also that it was ok to make a superhero movie with a female lead that was only "ok" and have it still be viewed as a success. It read as kind of a back-handed compliment, but its still a good point.

I don't think that's wrong. People sometimes forget how high the MCU's standards are. People argue over their relative ranking, but the truth is that only arguably three of them (Incredible Hulk, Thor 2, and IM 2) weren't "solidly good" or better. CM was totally a good movie and was absolutely a solid addition to the MCU slate. It wasn't one of the best ones, but it certainly wasn't one of the worst ones. WW, on the other hand, was genuinely great. It had some weak parts (the ending climactic battle was underwhelming), but when it was good (like the No Man's Land scene and the following battle in the village) it was SPECTACULAR. There's no harm in saying both were good movies, but WW was probably better.

These numbers are just ludicrous. And the reviews are as well. Slate's Dana Stevens admits she doesn't get super hero movies (though she'll grudgingly acknowledge when the good ones are good) and she compared it to Samuel Beckett in space. It was a bit TIC, but even so, holy hell.

A: Domestic top 15: 1) Avengers: EG - 738M 2) Lion King - 498M 3) Spider-Man: FFH - 361M 4) Toy Story 4 - 355M 5) SLOP 2 - 275M 6) Pikachu - 266M 7) Hobbs & Shaw - 202M 😎 Aladdin - 170M 9) Godzilla - 168M 10) Wick 3 - 118M 11) MiB: INTL - 115M 12) It 2 - 113M 13) Rocketman - 112M 14) Dark Phoenix - 109M 15) Annabelle - 105M Backup 16*) Once Upon a Time - 93M *Only used if a film above exits the game B: Top 7 Domestic OW: 1) Avengers: EG - 300M 2) Lion King - 160M 3) Toy Story 4 - 114M 4) It 2 - 105M 5) Spider-Man: FFH - 104M 6) Pikachu - 93M 7) SLOP 2 - 84M Backup 8*) Hobbs & Shaw - 82M *Only used if a film above exits the game 😄 Worldwide top 12: 1) Avengers: EG - 2.22B 2) Lion King - 1.225B 3) Spider-Man: FFH 935M 4) Pikachu - 850M 5) Toy Story 4 - 825B 6) Hobbs & Shaw - 800M 7) SLOP 2 - 715M 😎 Aladdin - 625M 9) Godzilla - 600M 10) MiB: ITL - 415M 11) Dark Phoenix - 405M 12) Annabelle - 335M Backup 13*) Rocketman - 325M *Only used if a film above exits the game 😧 TOP 5 Weekends 1) April 26-28th - 346M 2) July 19-21st - 257M 3) June 21-23rd - 217M 4) May 31 - June 2nd - 212M 5) June 7-9th - 210M backup 6*) May 10-12th - 195M *Only used if a film above exits the game E: Multipliers 1) Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - 3.8 2) Rocketman - 3.7 3) Dora - 3.6 4) Spider-Man: FFH - 3.4 5) Toy Story 4 - 3.2 backup 6*) SLOP 2 - 3.2 *Only used if a film above exits the game F: Total Grosses Top 15 DOM) $3.69B Top7 OW) $962M Top 12 WW) $9.95B Top 5 W/E) 1.242B Average Multi) 3.4x G: 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 - Annabelle B: 200M - Hobbs & Shaw 😄 300M - SLOP 2 😧 400M - Toy Story 4 E: 500M - Lion King RFQ2: Predict which film will finish closest to each of the following milestones Worldwide by the end of the game: A: $1.5B - Lion King B: $1B - Spider-Man: FFH 😄 800M - Hobbs & Shaw 😧 600M - Godzilla E: 400M - Dark Phoenix RFQ3: Predict the top grossing film of each month: A: April - Avengers: EG B: May - Pikachu 😄 June - Toy Story 4 😧 July - Lion King E: August - Hobbs & Shaw

WK1 - Yes, baby, YES!

There's like 80 hours to the dead line. No hurry. Edit - In the interest of full disclosure, I'm finally starting working on mine. Holy moly, this summer is crazy.

Not a good sign.

Whew. Using a Cashout is pricey now.