Wrath

80% Lego 30% Fifty Shades

Storks' performance makes me sad in that it was roughly my 3rd favorite animated movie of the year (after Kubo and Zootopia, Sausage Party isn't included because I'm *still* not entirely sure how I feel about it), but bad trailers completely failed to communicate its many strong points. I think its neck and neck with Ghostbusters for most poorly marketed movie of the year (which isn't to say I thought Ghostbusters was good, just that it isn't every day a movie's marketing campaign actually detracts value from the movie).

Nuts. Forgot their were two SotM's this week. Fortunately, I didn't forget to pre-emptively abstain from them, just in case I forgot to come back later.

There we go. Numbers crunched and predictions made. We're strongly optimistic on Hidden Figures (though so is BO.com), slightly pessimistic on Underworld, and I probably should have left Monster Calls out because MovieWeb and Variety's predictions are insane (ok, that's because I interpreted Variety's "Less than $10M" as $9M, when they probably meant $9.00, but I do the best I can with the data I'm provided). Hidden Figures Mean: 21.0M Median: 21.3M StnDev: 3.93M (revised StnDev: 4.07M) Ratio (StnDev/Mean): 18.43% High: 28M Low: 14M BO.com 21M Deadline 16M MovieWeb 13.7M Variety 17M Monster Calls Mean: 2.8M Median: 2.1M StnDev: 1.47M (revised StnDev: 4.80M) Ratio (StnDev/Mean): 70.18% High: 5.5M Low: 1.87M BO.com Deadline MovieWeb 16.8M Variety 9M Underworld Mean: 14.2M Median: 13.5M StnDev: 3.71M (revised StnDev: 3.15M) Ratio (StnDev/Mean): 27.48% High: 21M Low: 10M BO.com 13.5M Deadline 14M MovieWeb 14.6M Variety 15M

Sigh. Tragically, everyone else either did 4-day or 6-day predicts. So, pffff.

Collateral Beauty Prediction: 11.0M +/- 9.5M (1 standard deviation) Actual: 7.1M (off by 3.9M, so 0.41 stndev) Well, um, that's ONE way to get a decent predict. One predictor guessed 40M, which had a minimal effect on the median but gave us a gigantic stndev. Normally, our stndev on an opening expected to be around this level would be, very roughly, about 25-30% of our predicted open. So, maybe 3M. That would have made our miss equal to about 1.3 stndev which would rank as bad but not completely awful. A 0.41, on the other hand, counts as a pretty solid predict. If this kind of thing pops up again I may step in. On the bright side, all the other prediction sits were pretty close to us so everyone was off by a lot. Best predict was by MCKillswitch123 at 5M. Manchester by the Sea Prediction: 7.32M +/- 0.91M (1 standard deviation) Actual: 4.22M (off by 3.1M, so 3.42 stndev) Gah. Wrong by a lot, AND our predicts were tightly clustered so our Stndev was super small. Just disastrously bad. Most other folks were bad, too, except BO.com who guessed 5m Best predict was by mahnamahna at 5.5M. Rogue One Prediction: 162.32M +/- 33.74M (1 standard deviation) Actual: 155.08M (off by 7.2M, so 0.21 stndev) Nice predict. Blockbusters tend to be a little easier to predict in terms of stndev, but this was still a solid result. BO.com nailed it perfect at 155M, but we were the second best. Best predict was again by MCKillswitch123 at 157M. Good week for MCKillswitch123.

I'll take 30% of Underworld.

Abstain for... Oh, dammit, I can't do that, can I? Ok, fine. 1. Will Underworld make more than $15m? *NO* 2. Will Underworld make more than $22.5m? 3000 *NO* 3. Will Rogue One make more than $22.5m? *YES* 4. Will Rogue One make more than $27.5M? *YES* 5. Will Sing make more than $24m? 2000 *YES* 6. Will Sing make more than $28m? *NO* 7. Will Rogue One hold onto number 1? *YES* 8. Will Hidden Figures make more than $8.5M? *YES* 9. Will A Monster Calls make more than $8.5M? 2000 *NO* 10. Which will gross more this coming weekend: Hidden Figures, Monster Calls or Passengers? *Hidden Figures* 11. Will Moana stay in the top 6? *NO* 12. Will Assassin's Creed cross $50M by the end of the weekend? 3000 *YES* 13. Will Railroad Tigers have a PTA above $3000? *NO* 14. Will Office Xmas Party stay above Jackie? *YES* 15. Will fantastic Beasts finish the weekend with a Domestic total within $1M of Dr Strange's? *NO* 16. Will any film drop more than 70% in the top 20? 2000 *YES* 17. Will Paterson's PTA stay above $10,000? *YES* 18. How many films will make more than $7.5M? 3000 *6* 19. Will Trolls drop more than 55%? *YES* 20. Will Passengers make the $80M I need it to this weekend in order for my preseason prediction to look good? 2000 *Absolutely! But then, sadly, you'll wake up..." Bonus: 16/25 2000 17/25 3000 18/25 5000 19/25 7000 20/25 9000 21/25 12000 22/25 15000 23/25 18000 24/25 21000 25/25 25000 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 Underworld's 3 day gross. 13.55M 2. Predict Monster Calls' Percentage increase from last weekend. 2700% 3. What will Manchester by the Sea's PTA be? $2,650 Part 3: Predict the films that place in the following positions: 1. Rogue One 3. Hidden Figures 5. La La Land 8. Fences 11. Manchester by the Sea 14. Monster Calls 3/6 2000 points 4/6 5000 points 5/6 8000 points 6/6 13000 points

Abstain for now

Interesting. I almost saw this on two different occasions over the holidays, but both times the person I was going to see it with got sick at the last minute and we cancelled. Kinda wish I had seen it, now. Hollywood/movies - #5 Musicals - #7 Ryan Goslin - #2 Emma Stone - #6

I put Billy Lynn at $75M. Mistakes were made...

My only objection to putting Lego Batman so high is that the competition ends... Feb 26th? Oh, wait, I thought it ended on the 19th and Lego Batman was only going to get 2 weekends + the weekdays in between. Giving it another weekend + week helps it a lot. Ok, I still don't think it'll squeeze in between Strange and FB, but I certainly think it can manage 6th.

Hidden Figures (wide) - 18.5M Monster Calls (wide) - 1.9M Underworld - 13.5M

Boom! With 895+K to spare!

Just a smidgen more interesting than last week. I'm a little behind on the last couple weeks thanks to holiday travel and hangovers, but I'll catch up this week. Please provide your 1/6-8 Three-Day Opening Weekend predicts for, Hidden Figures (wide) Monster Calls (wide) Underworld Deadline this week will be Thursday afternoon (US Eastern time), whenever I get to it. Note that we will be using our median predict rather than our mean predict going forward.

Yeah. And its kind of a weird story. The Alchemist only came out in 1988 (in Brazil), and Coelho apparently wrote the entire thing in 2 weeks. The publisher who accepted it said it was an ok book, good enough to publish but only barely, and he shouldn't get his hopes up. And they weren't entirely wrong because it sat, selling slowly, for like a decade. Then someone translated it into French, it was an instant huge hit, and has solid 5+ million copies/year since then.

Yeah, works for me. Wow, my post was one of the most typo-ridden things I've ever written. I think the universe is telling me to go to bed.

Ah, my bad, I missed you. And DAJK and Chewy, it seems.

While I don't disagree with the extent to which SW is a merchandising juggernaut, its worth remembering the sheer extent of the HP books' success. I mean, everyone would assume the HP books sold a ton of copies, right? I mean, they must have or the movies wouldn't have done well. But what people often don't realize is that the HP books. Really didn't sell a truckload of books. They solid a metric-frigging f**k-ton of books. The 3 bests selling books of all time, worldwide, are the Bible (combining all versions), Chairman Mao's Little Red Book, and the Qur'an with total copies sold of 5+ billion each. They don't really count. After that, comes: 1. Don Quixote - Cervantes (its been in print for 504 which is kind of cheating, but even so) 2. Tale of Two Cities - Dickens (157 year in print hardly seems worth quibbling over after Quixote) 3. The Alchemist - Coelho (I have no idea, but it sold 150 million copies so it must have been good) 4. The Little Prince - Saint-Exupery (yes, that French kids' book about the kid on the tiny asteroid has indeed that popular) and 5. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - Rowling (that's pretty good, especially considering The Alchemist is the only book above it on the list that came out after WWII) The *worst* selling book is, surprisingly to me, Deathly Hallows, which ranks a paltry 22nd on the list (though they're mostly pretty close together. So, almost 1/3 of the best 22 selling books of all time are the original 7 HP books). Half-Blood Price was the second best seller after SS. Added together, the books have sold roughly 500M copies. That's a lot of money and cultural impact.

So, you didn't see Independence Day? Because I have trouble believing it was genuinely worse than that.

Current Domestic top 15 for the game (based on estimates, which is fine since this isn't final or anything): 1. Rogue One - 440M 2. Dr Strange - 230M 3. Fantastic Beasts - 225M 4. Moana - 213M 5. Sing - 180M 6. Trolls - 151M 7. Arrival - 93M 8. Medea - 73M 9. Passengers - 66M 10. Hacksaw Ridge - 65M 11. Jack Reacher - 59M 12. Office Christmas Party - 52M 13. Almost Christmas - 42M 14. Assassin's Creed - 42M 15. Allied - 40M Now, lets look at what's still coming, broken into a few groups: Released, making good money, at a minimum will blow past 40M: - La La Land - Why Him - Fences Released, too soon to tell: - Hidden Figures - Live by Night - Silence Not released yet: - Monster Trucks - Founder - xXx - Dog's Purpose - Resident Evil - Rings - 50 Shades Darker - John Wick - Lego Batman - Patriots Day (which no one picked) I see 3 that are locks (or close) to make, at a minimum, 70M: La La Land, Lego Batman and 50 Shades which will definitely push out Allied and Almost Christmas, and probably Assassin's Creed. xXx, Patriots Day, Resident Evil and Hidden Figures are all pretty good bets to make around 60M (or a little better). That'll get rid of of Office Christmas Party and Jack Reacher. I see Hacksaw Ridge (which is still clinging to a few hundred screens and making a little money) as being the cut-off line for the top 15. It'll probably finish the game around 66-67M and while it won't necessarily be #15 (who knows? Maybe Resident Evil will overperform a bit and push it to 16th), #15's total will be pretty close to that. If I had to guess (and why not?), I'd say the final 15 will look something like: 1. Rogue One 2. Sing 3. Moana 4. Fantastic Beasts 5. Dr Strange 6. Trolls 7. Lego Batman 8. Passengers 9. Arrival 10. La La Land 11. 50 Shades 12. Madea 13. Patriots Day 14. Hidden Figures 15. xXx or Hacksaw Ridge

Sing defines the difference between being crowdpleasing and bring genuinely good. But it wasnt bad and it was fun. I liked it better than SLOP but I didnt really like SLOP that much.

Like Cutthroat Island?

There's also the issue that the Yuan is down ~8% against the $US since the fall, turning, say $75M into $69M.

Dammit! I missed the week again.