Wrath

Yeah, totally. The original is *125* years old. Do people even remember it? Talk about waiting too long to make a sequel!

Agreed on all points.

Agreed. Its a good, fun movie, exactly what you'd expect from a solidly done sequel to the first Ant-Man. Not as many *jokes* as like GotG, but still very funny throughout. Perfect palate cleanser after A:IW, will probably do really well, but not great. The hook at the end is freaking dynamite.

During the Winter Game, I gambled and lost on a 50/50 QotW question with about 3 weeks to go. At the time, I thought I had a good shot at getting the final questions right if I got that one, and it felt like I had a shot at gaining a decent number of points if the gamble went well. However, I didn't sit down and do the math, I just eye-balled it and rolled the dice. Right after the deadline, I DID sit down and do the math and realized I'd made a big mistake. Sure, there were a decent number of points to gain, but if I was wrong the penalty was going to hit me REALLY hard making it a far more risky gamble than I'd realized. And I did indeed turn out to be wrong. After the game was over, I went back and did the math and realized that Cashing Out (I prefer to think of it as Abstaining) on that one question would have saved me enough points to bump up my final standing by 2-3 spots. This time around, I've decided to be a little more on top of the details of the mechanics.

Solo: China Solo: Brazil Solo: South Korea I2: China

1. Will Ant Man Open to more than $75M? 1000 YES 2. Will Ant Man Open to more than $82.5M? 2000 YES 3. Will The Purge Open to more than $17M 3 Day? 3000 YES 4. Will The Purge Open to more than $22M 3 Day? 4000 NO 5. Will Antman's Friday be higher than Purge's Sunday Total? 5000 YES 6. Will Jurassic World stay above $25M? 1000 YES 7. Will Incredibles drop less than 45%? 2000 YES 8. Will Deadpool stay above Won't You be my neighbour? 3000 NO 9. Will Sanju stay above Solo? 4000 NO 10. Will Black Panther increase more than 500% this weekend? 5000 ...NO 11. Will Sicario's PTA stay above Uncle Drew's PTA? 1000 NO 12. Will Tag increase more than 30% on Saturday? 2000 YES 13. Will Hereditary drop more than 25% on Sunday? 3000 YES 14. Will the top 5 make more than $160M combined? 4000 YES 15. Will Stan Lee cameo as Lord of the Flies? 5000 No, he'll be Piggy. 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 Purge make for its 3 day? 18.5M 2. What will Incredible's percentage change be? -43% 3. What will Sanju's PTA be for the Weekend? 2,350 Part 😄 There will be 6 films to place and points are expanded because traditionally people haven't scored well here: 2. JW (ugh. still split 50/50 on this one) 4. Purge 5. Sicario 7. O8 9. Won't You be my Neighbor? 12. Solo

Wk11 - Yes

Heh. This week, if Gambitpool beats 8wombi, and POTUS beats me, then next week POTUS and I will face each other for the 3rd straight week.

Totally agree. Great characters all around. Also worth noting, if M’Baku had won the fight at the start, none of it would have happened. Killmonger would have been like “Oh, you’re in charge? You know what? I’m good.”

Huh, somehow I missed Dern being one of the many things people complained about. Also, that reminds me, apropos of nothing, that we’re in a golden age of middle aged actresses who absolutely kill it. Christine Baranski, Laura Dern, Allison Janney to name a few.

Fine, fine. "One of the very few widely agreed up on good parts of Last Jedi."

Also, Laura Dern is hot right now as, arguably, the only widely-agreed upon good part of Last Jedi.

Visuals looked cool, but I agree it doesn't do a good job of communicating much else.

They need to get the marketing hype train going on this if they want more than $100-120M DOM.

1. Will Sicario Open to more than $16M? 1000 NO 2. Will Sicario Open to more than $20M? 2000 NO 3. Will Uncle Drew Open to more than $16M? 3000 YES 4. Will Uncle Drew Open to more than $20M? 4000 NO 5. Will Sicario open to more than Uncle Drew 5000 NO 6. Will Jurassic World stay above $70M? 1000 NO 7. Will Incredibles drop less than 50%? 2000 YES 8. Will Solo stay above Hereditary? 3000 YES 9. Will Superfly stay above Will You Be My Neighbour? 4000 NO 10. Will Tag's PTA stay above $1,750? 5000 YES 11. Will Avengers increase more than 35% on Friday? 1000 YES 12. Will Deadpool increase more than 50% on Saturday? 2000 NO 13. Will Book Club drop more than 47.5%? 3000 NO 14. Will the top 5 make more than $150M combined? 4000 NO 15. Will Brolin appear in every film from now on? 5000 He already IS in every movie. 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 Sicario make for its 3 day? 15M 2. What will Solo's percentage change be? -49% 3. What will Book Club's PTA be for the Weekend? 1,050 Part 😄 There will be 6 films to place and points are expanded because traditionally people haven't scored well here: 3. Uncle Drew 5. O8 6. Tag 8. DP2 10. Mr Rogers 12. A:IW

Incredibles 2: 8. 575M 28000/20000 Jurassic World: 4. 360M 8000/5000 Tag: 2. 50M 3000/2000

Good notes. One thing I'd note is that Exxdee's underperformance isn't unexpected. S/he missed at least 3 weeks, and those 0's aren't averaged into the overall score. When Exxdee has played, the results have been terrific. Edit - Also, prior to this last week's result, I compared the various ranking players against each other from each league (So, all the #1s from each league against each other, then all the #2s, etc. based on average%, not head-to-head score). League 4 had the top player at each slot from 1-4, but League 2 had the top player at slots 5-9, and then League 3 had franfar leading the pack at #10.

Wk10 - No

Crap, I think I'm going to lose this one, too. Everything was looking like smooth sailing until the huge jump for Solo from estimated to actual. Seriously, 10+%? Swung it from being a solid lead for me to a rounding error loss. Ugh.

I wouldn’t say that Skull Island was anything past “good” but it was totally fun, well put together, and much better than I (and I think, many) expected. And its BO reflected that. Kind of like Solo, minus the Last Jedi baggage.

Solo WAS fun. It wasn't great, but it wasn't first-trilogy bad, either. It deserved a better fate than it had.

I know folks have posted research claiming a hit song doesn’t help BO that much, but I have serious trouble believing it. IMO, Ballroom Blitz + an already really good trailer was worth 1/4 to 1/3 of Suicide Squad’s DOM total.

I bought in hard on Skyscraper early, but its marketing has really underwhelmed so far, and its running out of time to fix it.

I, too, am irrationally excited for The Meg. Saw the trailer for it before JW (for the umpteenth time) but it was new to my kids. They both loved it.

Top 5 opening weekends so far: 1) A:IW - 258M 2) Incredibles 2 - 183M 3) Jurassic World - 125-135M (roughly) 4) DP2 - 125M 5) Solo - 84M 6) Ocean's 8 - 42M 7) Life of the Party - 18M Ant-Man & Wasp will certainly push LotP off the list, and will probably be somewhere in the 3-5 range. That means the only slot really left up for grabs is #7 (O8 with 42M). Unless there's a huge surprise (which is always possible, maybe Uncle Drew?), the only 3 with any real chance of beating O8 are (in ascending order) Christopher Robin, Skyscraper, and MI:Fallout making it a 4-way race for that spot. Solo bombed hard, but 84M is likely way out of reach for those 4. AM&W isn't a lock to open above Solo, but I think its odds are pretty good. Even if it doesn't, it'll be a real surprise if it under-performs enough for one of these to catch it. The last couple MI:F trailers have been pretty good, and Skycraper's marketing has been meh so far, so I'd bet it ends up something like 1) AIW 2) Incredibles 2 3) JW 4) DP2 5) AM&W 6) Solo 7) MI:F With Skycraper coming in a close 8th.