Wrath

I'm not caught up, but it would have been *criminal* to not post predicts for this week. Wildly low Ratios on both so I hope we're right. As usual, I went through the various predicts (24 for BvS, 23 for Greek) and here's what we ended up with: BvS Mean: 173.2M Median: 175M StnDev: 15.53M Ratio (StnDev/Mean): 8.96% High: 225M Low: 140M BO.com 172M Deadline 161M MovieWeb 159M ShowBuzzDaily 166M Variety 150M Greek Wedding Mean: 13.5M Median: 13.5M StnDev: 2.00M Ratio (StnDev/Mean): 14.80% High: 18M Low: 10M BO.com 18.5M Deadline MovieWeb 17.5M ShowBuzzDaily 17M Variety 10M

Thanks! Basement is almost all better. Unfortunately, my time of out of the blue improbable distractions is continuing, as Mrs Wrath's 33 year old cousin just had a stroke. She's a doctor in Chicago and hopefully still will be after this is over. We're pretty close and we're considering flying out to visit her. I still remember her in junior high and giving her advice on colleges. Its really bizarre. PS - I'm going with: BvS 175 Greek 13.5

Sigh. Just as I've gotten things back together, my basement floods. Spent the last week dealing with that. Hopefully *this* will be the week I get my act back together. Should be a good week for it. Please provide your 3/25-27 Opening Weekend predicts for, Batman vs Superman Big Fat Greek Wedding Deadline is now going to be sometime between midnight Wednesday and Thursday midmorning (US Eastern time), depending on when I get to it. Ps - I'll get last week's predicts and results up tomorrow, plus its time to update the data I've posted in case anyone is curious.

Oh, boo.

Allegiant - 27.5M Miracles from Heaven (Wed) - 10.9M

TOP 15 ETC PREDICTION TEMPLATE Below is a helpful template to use for making predictions. All Players who use this template for their predictions will receive 10,000 bonus points for making my life easier when I have to score everything at the end of the game. A: Domestic top 15: 1) Civil War - 465M 2) Finding Dory - 415M 3) Suicide Squad - 267M 4) X-Men - 222M 5) Star Trek Beyond - 190M 6) Independence Day 2 - 176M 7) TMNT 2 - 163M 8) Bourne - 161M 9) Secret Life of Pets - 153M 10) Ice Age - 139M 11) Alice 2 - 122M 12) The BFG - 113M 13) Tarzan - 112M 14) Conjuring 2 - 105M 15) Neighbors 2 - 104M B: Top 7 Domestic OW: 1) Civil War - 205M 2) Finding Dory - 125M 3) Suicide Squad - 108M 4) X-Men - 87M 5) Star Trek Beyond - 69M 6) Independence Day - 64M 7) TMNT 2 - 55M C: Worldwide top 10: 1) Civil War - 1.2B 2) Finding Dory - 1B 3) X-Men - 755M 4) Ice Age - 715M 5) Suicide Squad - 705M 6) Independence Day - 700M 7) Alice - 610M 8) TMNT 2 - 445M 9) Star Trek - 415M 10) Warcraft - 380M D: Worldwide Weekends: 1) Civil War 340M 2) Finding Dory 210M 3) Suicide Squad 190M 4) X-Men 165M5) Independence Day 135M E: China Box Office: 1) Civil War 210M 2) Finding Dory 140M 3) X-Men 125M 4) Ice Age 85M 5) Warcraft 80M 6) Suicide Squad 70M 7) TMNT2 60M F: Total Grosses: Top 15 Dom) 2.9B Top 7 W/E) 725M Top 10 WW) 7.1B Top 5 China) 500M G: Around The World in 80 Box Offices: South Korea #1) Finding Dory South Africa #1) Civil War Brazil #1) Civil War Mexico #1) Civil War Australia #1 ) Finding Dory Italy #1 ) Civil War Pre-season Questions: A generous risk-free question to start you off: Predict which film will finish closest to each of the following milestones domestically by the end of the game: A: 100M Conjuring 2 B: 200M Star Trek Beyond C: 300M Suicide Squad D: 400M Finding Dory E: 500M Civil War Each correctly predicted film scores you 15,000 points, get all four correct and receive 25,000 bonus points for 100k total. (This is the only preseason question where there is no penalty for being wrong so enjoy it). 1) Tell me which of these will be the highest grossing film of the summer domestically: *INDEPENDENCE DAY* 179M1) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 2) Independence Day Resurgence 3) Angry Birds Movie4) Ghostbusters Answer correctly: 12,000 points Answer incorrectly: -5,000 points State that you abstain: 2,000 points Correctly predict the films gross to within 20M and receive a 13,000 point bonus, Predict to within 10M and receive 23,000 points bonus. 2) Tell me which of these will be the lowest grossing film of the summer domestically: *FREE STATE OF JONES* 12M1) Free State of Jones 2) Purge: Election Year 3) Popstar: Never Stop Not Stopping 4) Nine Lives Answer correctly: 12,000 points Answer incorrectly: -5,000 points State that you abstain: 2,000 points Correctly predict the films gross to within 10M and receive a 13,000 point bonus, Predict to within 5M and receive 23,000 points bonus 3) Will at least 3 films make more than 300M domestically by the end of the game? *Abstain* Answer correctly: 15,000 points Answer incorrectly: lose 10,000 points State that you abstain: 3,000 points 4) Will animated films combine to make more than 800M domestically by the end of the game? *YES* Answer correctly: 15,000 points Answer incorrectly: lose 10,000 points State that you abstain: 3,000 points 5) Will at least 3 films make more than 100M OW domestic? *Abstain* Answer correctly: 20,000 points Answer incorrectly: lose 15,000 points State that you abstain: 4,000 points 6) Will any film have either a second domestic 3 day weekend or a second worldwide weekend that would have qualified for its respective top X table if multiple entries had been allowed? *YES* Answer correctly: 20,000 points Answer incorrectly: lose 15,000 points State that you abstain: 4,000 points 7) Will at least 3 of the top 5 domestic films of the summer NOT be comic book films? *Abstain* Answer correctly: 20,000 points Answer incorrectly: lose 15,000 points State that you abstain: 4,000 points 8) Will the top 3 films of the summer’s combined gross be higher than the combined gross of Batman vs Superman, Jungle Book and Zootopia? *YES* Answer correctly: 20,000 points Answer incorrectly: lose 15,000 points State that you abstain: 4,000 points 9) Will any film have a domestic Opening Weekend above $50M but not open to number one at the box office? *YES* (In fact, I'm pretty confident it'll happen at least twice) Answer correctly: 25,000 points Answer incorrectly: lose 20,000 points State that you abstain: 5,000 points 10) Will at least 2 sequel/prequel/reboots drop more than 33.33% Domestically from the previous installment in its franchise (Civil War is vs Winter Soldier, Apocalypse is against DOFP and Bourne is vs Ultimatum for this question)? *YES* Answer correctly: 25,000 points Answer incorrectly: lose 20,000 points State that you abstain: 5,000 points 11) Will at least 2 DOMESTIC titles make over $150M in China? *Abstain* Answer correctly: 25,000 points Answer incorrectly: lose 20,000 points State that you abstain: 5,000 points 12) Will at least 3 animated films open to number one at the domestic box office? *Abstain* Answer correctly: 25,000 points Answer incorrectly: lose 20,000 points State that you abstain: 5,000 points 13) Will any film with a budget above $120M (according to BOM or another credible source) gross less than $60M domestically? *Abstain* Answer correctly: 25,000 points Answer incorrectly: lose 20,000 points State that you abstain: 5,000 points 14) Will any domestic film get more than 8 million admissions in South Korea? *Abstain* Answer correctly: 25,000 points Answer incorrectly: lose 20,000 points State that you abstain: 5,000 points 15) Will any film make more than $45M in Germany? *Abstain* Answer correctly: 30,000 points Answer incorrectly: lose 25,000 points State that you abstain: 6,000 points 16) Will at least 3 comedy films (as listed by BOM) make over $100M domestic? *No* Answer correctly: 30,000 points Answer incorrectly: lose 25,000 points State that you abstain: 6,000 points 17) Will any film open to 1st place domestically in its opening weekend and then drop more than 64% in its second week? *Abstain* Answer correctly: 30,000 points Answer incorrectly: lose 25,000 points State that you abstain: 6,000 points 18) Will any film in the worldwide top 10 NOT be in the domestic top 15 films at the end of the game? *Abstain* Answer correctly: 30,000 points Answer incorrectly: lose 25,000 points State that you abstain: 6,000 points 19) Which combination of films will gross the most amount of money domestically during the game? *#1* 1) Finding Dory, Civil War, Popstar: Never stop Never Stopping, Mike and Dave need Wedding Dates 2) Apocalypse, Star Trek 3, Sausage Party, Alice Through the Looking Glass 3) Warcraft, Neighbours 2, Tarzan, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 4) Jason Bourne, Central Intelligence, Secret Life of Pets, Conjuring 2 Answer correctly: 30,000 points Answer incorrectly: lose 25,000 points State that you abstain: 5,000 points 20) Which combination of films will gross the smallest amount of money during the game? *Abstain* 1) Pete’s Dragon, Keanu, The Shallow, Nine Lives, 2) Legend of Tarzan, Ratchett and Clank, Me Before You, Arms and the Dudes 3) Ice Age, Money Monster, Lights Out, The Space Between Us, 4) Ben Hur, Now You See Me 2, The Shallows, Mechanic: Resurrection, Answer correctly: 30,000 points Answer incorrectly: lose 25,000 points State that you abstain: 5,000 points Jajang’s (JJ-8) little set of Questions. Answer if you Dare!Part A: A Fish called Dory 1) Will Finding Dory produce the biggest “animated” opening weekend of 2016 ? (Current Record – 2016 = Zootopia 75.1m) *YES* 2) Will Finding Dory produce the biggest “animated” opening weekend ever ? (Current Record = Shrek the Third : 121.6m) *YES* 3) Will Finding Dory make more than 300m domestically ? *YES* 4) Will Finding Dory make more than 400m domestically ? *YES* 5) Will Finding Dory top the Summer Game domestically ? (ie. #1 film for the game) *NO* 6) Will Finding Dory make more than 1B worldwide ? *NO* 7) Will Finding Dory become the #1 Animated Film Worldwide (Current #1 = Frozen 1.277B) *NO* 8) How many weekends will an Animated Film be on top of the weekend chart ? (You have a Cushion of 1 Weekend – so if you are off by 1 you still get this correct) *3* 9) Will any of the listed Animated Films have a weekend drop of “< 30%” in their 2nd weekends ? *NO* 10) How many Animated Films will be in the top 15 for the summer game ? (you have a Cushion of 1 Film) *4* Part B: It’s a Comic Book World 1) A comic book film is expected to make the highest opening weekend during the summer game (Many of you will have it as your number 1 Weekend). Name that Film OR if you don’t think a Comic Film will be the number 1 weekend this summer, then put NONE. *Civil War* 2) Will Captain America: Civil War make more than Iron Man 2 (128.1m) on Opening Weekend? *YES* 3) Will Captain America: Civil War make more than Iron Man 3 (174.1m) (and inherently more than BVS) on Opening Weekend? *YES* 4) Will Captain America: Civil War make more than Captain America: The Winter Soldier (259.8m)? *YES* 5) Will Captain America: Civil War become the biggest MCU film which doesn’t have “The Avengers” in its title (ie. More than Iron Man 3 (409m)) *YES* 6) Will X-Men: Apocalypse make more than X-Men: Days of Future Past (90.8m) on Opening weekend? *NO* 7) Will X-Men: Apocalypse make more than Deadpool (132.4m) on Opening weekend (this would make it the largest of the X-Men series)? *NO* 8) Will X-Men: Apocalypse make more than X-Men: The Last Stand (234.4m)? *NO* 9) Will X-Men: Apocalypse become the biggest of the X-Men series/franchise (Deadpool – Final number isn’t done yet)? *NO* 10) Will Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows make more than Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) (65.6m) on Opening weekend? *YES* 11) Will Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows make more than Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) (191.2m)?*NO* 12) Will Suicide Squad make more than Captain America: The First Avenger (65.1m)? *YES* 13) Will Suicide Squad (Total) make more than Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Opening Weekend (170m – estimate)? *YES* 14) Will All Comic Book films (Total) make more than 1 Billion domestically (Total of all 4 films together)? *YES* 15) Will any Comic Book film drop more than 62% in it’s second weekend? (this will always reference 3 day totals only) *No* 16) In how many of the following markets will a Comic Book film be the number 1 film (Total Gross) during the Game? (You have a cushion of 1 country) (Australia; Brazil; China; France; Germany; Mexico; Russia; South Korea; United Kingdom) *6* 17) Will Captain America: Civil War make more than 1 Billion Worldwide? *YES* 18) Will Captain America: Civil War (Worldwide Total) OR X-Men: Apocalypse (Worldwide Total) make than Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (Worldwide Total) AND Suicide Squad (Worldwide Total) Worldwide? *NO* 19) Will at least 2 Comic Book films receive a Cinema Score of at least “A”? *NO* 20) How Many Comic Book films will be in the ALL 3 of the main game charts? (there is no Cushion for this one!) *3* REMEMBER!!! USE THIS TEMPLATE (WITHOUT DELETING ANYTHING) AND RECEIVE 20,000 BONUS POINTS ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!

I like it. Sounds good.

Btw, I'm cancelling my "creative" offer for now. I approve of the rule change, but I need to think about it before coming up with a new offer. Something will definitely be coming, though.

Please provide your 3/18-20 Opening Weekend *3-day* predicts for, Allegiant Miracles from Heaven (Wed) Deadline is now going to be sometime between midnight Wednesday and Thursday midmorning (US Eastern time), depending on when I get to it.

Ok, lets be creative about this: I'm offering 100% of Risen and 20% of Eddie the Eagle for... -50k per 1% So, I'll give you $5M to take 100% of Risen off my hands (or $1M if you only want 20%) and $1M if you take Eddie the Eagle. Plus, obviously, you get their remaining revenue.

I'll take 100% of Barbershop. Edit - What the hell, I'll take 100% of Jungle Book too.

8 hours and 24 minutes to go for the east coast of the US. Parts of Alaska won't get there for at least another 6 hours after that, though.

Well, I managed to get caught up this week, but I didn't quite manage to get back on pace. That should be dealt with next week. So, still no pithy banter or observations. As usual, I went through the various predicts (15 for 10 Cloverfield, 14 for everything else) and here's what we ended up with: 10 Cloverfield Mean: 28.3M Median: 28M StnDev: 4.21M Ratio (StnDev/Mean): 14.87% High: 35M Low: 21M BO.com 24M Deadline 27.5M MovieWeb 26M ShowBuzzDaily 26M Variety 20M Brothers Grimsby Mean: 10.6M Median: 11M StnDev: 2.55M Ratio (StnDev/Mean): 24.2% High: 14M Low: 6M BO.com 5.5M Deadline 7.5M MovieWeb 8M ShowBuzzDaily 7.5M Variety 8M Perfect Match Mean: 4.4M Median: 3.5M StnDev: 2.64M Ratio (StnDev/Mean): 59.86% High: 8.7M Low: 1.8M BO.com 4.5M Deadline 5.5M MovieWeb 1.2M ShowBuzzDaily 4.5M Variety 5M Young Messiah Mean: 6.8M Median: 6.55M StnDev: 2.95M Ratio (StnDev/Mean): 43.45% High: 12M Low: 2M BO.com 6.7M Deadline 7.5M MovieWeb 7.5M ShowBuzzDaily 8M Variety 7M

Money, schmoney. I want the %.

Alright, alright. I'll buy however much BvS anyone has to give up. Edit - Alternatively, I'll buy up to 100% of BvS for 2.625M, which is 5% more than you bought it for. So, if you think you're going to have to dump 10% of your BvS, sell it to me for a profit instead.

Just to make sure I'm clear, I think tracking active % is a great idea and if the cap % ends up low enough that I'll be penalized by it immediately, and I suspect that'll be the case, I'm ok with it. BUT I only like the idea *IF* it doesn't increase your administrative workload too significantly. You've got a system you're working with now, you've been running it for a while and have it down. I don't want us to make any changes that'll cause extra work to running the game. As far as penalties go, I think the 1 week rule is fine, escalating to 3 weeks over threshold #2, whatever that ends up being. I also think those are reasonable criteria for a movie being "active". When BOM stops reporting weekend revenue, its done, and people should be aware that it could be quite a while before that happens. Figuring out the % is the tricky part. Low enough to impact people's decision making in a meaningful way, but not so low that it strangles people. Maybe 900% and 1500% as the two cut-offs?

10 Cloverfield Lane 24.8M Brothers Grimsby 7.1M Perfect Match 1.8M Young Messiah 7.2M

Huh. I'm not a fan of that rule. I mean, I get the Deadpool was unusual, but even so, most people are going to get to this point sometime in Spring or early summer. I'm just already at the point where I could have gone 100% on BvS and had plenty of cash left over, but an overabundance of cash is going to bite everyone relatively soon. But my personal struggle with this rule isn't why I don't like it. I get why the rule is there. The idea is to let people catch up who joined late, or hadn't been very active, and to a lesser degree folks who haven't picked movies well. They have less money, so they presumably invest in fewer movies. This is supposed to help them, and it sort of does, but in a kind of clumsy fashion. I'll explain. The problem is that while it sort of helps them, but it also *badly* hampers them by completely wrecking a style of play. By summer, blockbusters start arriving fast and thick, and people with big bank accounts will be able to gap full allotments of Civil War *and* Angry Birds *and* Apocalypse. The only thing stopping them is having to wait a week. On the one hand, that's great, the little guys get first crack. The problem is that someone struggling isn't going to have the $500M necessary to buy all those so they're likely to fall even further behind. Really, their best strategy is to try and gamble on the little movies, hoping to get a The Boy that breaks out and gives them a big return on their investment. But to do that, they need to rack up *much* higher Investment % totals than someone who just does blockbusters, so they rapidly run through their allotment of % before ending up in the same boat as everyone else. So its a penalty that's initially helpful, but actually builds up the fastest on the people who need it the most. That's what I meant by it being clumsy. The problem, imo, is that the penalty encourages a "wait for the big movie, then be the first people to type in that they're buying it" gameplay, where all the action occurs in 5 minute periods once/week. You get it and you win, or you're 30 seconds late (or you forget, as I often do, and are like 14 hours late) and you're out of luck. As the game progresses, the game just becomes more and more concentrated in this. I see the need to constrain the wealthier players from just vacuuming everything up (which is what I consciously decided to do by passing on BvS, which was an interesting, if questionable, decision at the time. But now is clearly a major error), and the game is well underway so changes involving different mechanics aren't suggested lightly. But I'm surprised this hasn't come up before. What's lacking, imo, is a meaningful "how do I best allocate my resources?" mechanic once the game gets past the first couple months. Maybe your suggestion of a cap on the active % of movies a player can have at one time is the way to go (You're a management company, right? You can only oversee so many projects at one time). It seems like a good idea to me. That way, the players will say "Hmm, how can I best use my allowed, active 600% (or whatever)?" The rich players can say "Hmm, I better invest in Apocalypse, because even though I'm not sure it'll be huge, I can't afford to invest in the smaller ones or I won't be able to use all my money", while the poorer players can pick Conjuring 2 or whatever, going for smaller budget, higher % return movies. Different people can end up with optimal strategies involving completely different sets of movies. That sounds interesting.

Boom. Another good week. London Has Fallen Prediction: 16.2M +/- 3.72M (1 standard deviation) Actual: 21.6M (off by 5.4M, so 1.45 stndev) Our worst predict in three weeks, and everyone else nailed it, too. Well, can't win 'em all. DAJK had the best predict at 21.2M Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Prediction: 8.3M +/- 1.72M (1 standard deviation) Actual: 7.4M (off by 0.9M, so 0.55 stndev) That's more like it! Good predict! Ok, not great, but certainly good and almost, but not quite, very good... Ok, I'll stop copy-pasting answers as soon as we stop getting virtually identical prediction results in each spot from the prior week. Tied for second best predict, behind only Variety, this time. Our best predict was 7.4M from Panamovie, though babz06's 7.5M predict was achingly close (not that I'm counting, but a guess of 7.485M would have won it for babz06. Maybe next time). Zootopia Prediction: 77.7M +/- 13.76M (1 standard deviation) Actual: 75.1M (off by 2.6M, so 0.19 stndev) Darn good predict! That's excellent territory, and we had comfortably the best predict of the pack. Shockingly, none of us actually predicted a nice, round 75M, so DAJK wins again with a 73M predict, narrowly beating a few folks who predicted 78M.

No pithy banter. None. As usual, I went through the various predicts (17 for everything) and here's what we ended up with: London has Fallen Mean: 16.2M Median: 16.0M StnDev: 3.72M Ratio (StnDev/Mean): 23.00% High: 22.8M Low: 10M BO.com 21M Deadline 21M MovieWeb 22M ShowBuzzDaily 22.5M Variety 23M Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Mean: 8.3M Median: 8.0M StnDev: 1.72M Ratio (StnDev/Mean): 20.61% High: 12.1M Low: 6.2M BO.com 8.3M Deadline 11M MovieWeb 10M ShowBuzzDaily 8.5M Variety 8M Zootopia Mean: 77.7M Median: 80.0M StnDev: 13.76M Ratio (StnDev/Mean): 17.71% High: 103.5M Low: 45M BO.com 71M Deadline 65M MovieWeb 63M ShowBuzzDaily 67M Variety 67M

Very solid week of predicting. I should have nieces more often. Eddie the Eagle Prediction: 9.6M +/- 3.17M (1 standard deviation) Actual: 6.1M (off by 3.5M, so 1.09 stndev) Not great but not awful. We were the most optimistic and the movie came in a little low. Best predict was... Oh, wait, sorry, that was my commentary from basically everything last week. Though, honestly, exact same result for Eddie as well. Best predict was 6M by Impact. Gods of Egypt Prediction: 12.9M +/- 2.52M (1 standard deviation) Actual: 14.1M (off by 1.2M, so 0.48 stndev) Good predict! Ok, not great, but certainly good and almost, but not quite, very good. Second best predict, behind only Deadline. Our best predict was 14M from deparment store basement. Triple 9 Prediction: 6.8M +/- 2.11M (1 standard deviation) Actual: 6.1M (off by 0.7M, so 0.34 stndev) Even better. This one gets to be called "very good" and as a bonus we were *by far* the best of the predicts. Best predict was 6M by a 3-way tie of DamienRoc, Ethan Hunt, and WrathofHan.

Oh, one thought: that % goes down once movies are out of the theater, right? I mean, Masked Saint is long-gone at this point. Is that going to get held against me until the end of the game?

Bah. I knew Mrs Wrath didn't know what she was talking about with Eddie the Eagle. She really liked the movie (I haven't seen it), but it just didn't catch on.

I wish! Regretting passing on BvS, overestimated how much there would be to invest in with everyone else having lots of cash tied up in that.

The Boss 75%