Wrath

Its pretty much having the kind of run I suspect a lot of folks (including me), thought Hateful 8 was going to have. Turns out Leo is a better fit than Tarantino's madness.

There's a trick to the SOTM's, you know. Unlike you, I blow donkeys at the the weeklies, yet this trick gives me a decent score overall. Really, its magic trick. Well, not so much a magic TRICK as a magic WORD. That word, of course, is "Abstain". As far as this competition goes, its the best word in the English language. If you can crush it on the weeklies, you just want to not shoot yourself in the foot elsewhere. Pick the SOTMs that you are absolutely sure you can get points on, and abstain on everything else. Its the easy guide to life. The downside, of course, is that you'll never win. On the other hand, I have no illusions of being able to win and I'm quite pleased to be in 6th.

With Julie Bowen as the bad guy although she was only in her early 30s at that point. Also, that movie has the record for the longest on-screen kiss in a movie (around 6 minutes, in the closing credits. No, I never saw it. Yea for Wikipedia.

That I didn't take the time to watch Fury Road more times? Yes, probably so.

Its funny. I havent seen Creed yet. Planned to a couple times, but last minute stuff kept happening so I had to keep cancelling. So finally I was going to see it tonight. Bringing sone buddies who hadnt seen it either, nothing else going on, its finally going to happen. So this afternoon I double check the start time, and my eyes pop out of my head. Creeds start time is still the same, but starting 5 minutes later is... Fury Road. In IMAX. Its back for like 2 weeks. Naturally, I called everyone and talked them into seeing FR instead. My excuse was that two of the guys never actually saw Fury Road, but really I had always been a little disappointed I never saw FR on IMAX non-3D. I guess the universe doesnt want me to see Creed for some reason.

Ok, that all sounds a little more credible. Edit - I mean, I don't know if they'll end up being right or not, but they don't seem obviously wrong like the last ones.

Hmm. No change from those nutty 13/4.5/4 friday numbers yet, eh?

I'm just seeing $0 for everything for the prediction average. Is it just me?

I was a little shocked to discover that neither Wrathette has any interest whatsoever in seeing KFP3. I was all ready to buy tickets ahead of time and take them Sunday afternoon, but they're both actively not interested in going. On the one hand, I'm now pleased to have gone slightly low in my KFP3 prediction. On the other hand, the Wrathettes frequently demonstrate they have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to movies. Wrathette #2 is deeply bitter I won't take her to see 5th Wave. One day she'll thank me.

Movie releases were *really* different in ET's day, though, making really really long runs far more doable than today. ET added theaters for *9* consecutive weeks after its release and was still in 1000+ theaters on weekend 31. Movies just aren't handled like that today. Edit - That list of movies is wacky. Space Hunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone! I remember watching that in the theater! Molly Ringwald as a sci-fi hero! In 3D! My god that was a terrible movie. It opened the same weekend as Return of the Jedi? Why did that seem like a good idea?

Ow ow ow ow ow. Not pretty. Then again, the average on those comps, even if you toss out Horrible Bosses, isn't really any worse than anyone was expecting. I mean, its not like Finest Hours was going to open to $30M or anything. At this point, I think most people are thinking around $10M for Finest Hours and maybe 8-9M for 50 Shades. These comps seem to suggest Finest Hours is more or less in line for that, and 50 Shades won't be far off.

Darn it. Jane Got a Gun ended up being wide after all. I'd read all along that it was expecting 300-400, and was pretty surprised to see it jump to 1210 theaters as of this morning. Ah well, with the benefit of hindsight I guess I should have included it.

How on earth are they expecting Jane to open to $4M when its only in ~400 theaters and is getting bad reviews to boot? Edit - Ack! Up to 1210 for Jane. Yesterday it was 410. Maybe it will get $4-6M after all, though it *still* only has 4 reviews at RT.

1. Will Kung Fu Panda open to at least $35M? *YES* 2. Will Kung Fu Panda open to at least $42.5M? 3000 *YES* 3. Will Kung Fu Panda open to at least $50M? *NO* 4. Will 50 shades of Black open to within 25% of Jack Black's weekend total (yes this technically includes Goosebumps ) *NO* 5. Will Alvin drop more than 62% this weekend? *NO* (interesting aside, prior to last weekend, all the Alvin movies, collectively, only had a single -60% drop weekend, and that was the very final weekend of the original movie where it dropped from 20 theaters and $10k in box office to 3 theaters and $1k. That was it. This Alvin movie has brought shame upon its franchise) 6. Will the Finest Hours Open ahead of the Revenant? 2000 *NO* 7. Will Star Wars' weekend total be at least $2M ahead of the 6th placed film? *YES* 8. Will Norm of the North stay above the Big Short? *NO* 9. Will Dirty Grandpa remain ahead of both the Boy and 5th wave next weekend? 3000 *YES* 10. Will Jane got a Gun make at least $1.5M this weekend? *NO* 11. Will 13 hours cross 40M by the end of the weekend? *YES* 12. Will at least 3 Oscar Nominated films (any category, any position) increase this weekend? *NO* 13. Will Star wars have a higher PTA than Revenant? 2000 *YES* 14. Will the 5th wave have made half its budget ($38M according to BOM) back by the end of the weekend? *NO* 15. Will ride along 2 remain in the top 6 this weekend? *NO* 16. Will any non-animated film increase at least 85% on Saturday? *NO* 17. Will The Hateful 8 have a bigger Sunday drop than The Forest? 3000 *NO* 18. Will Spotlight finish 16th or higher this weekend? *NO* 19. Will Carol finish above the Danish Girl this weekend? 2000 *YES* 20. Will Daddy's Home drop more than 53%? *YES* 21. Did you know there was apparently an Ip Man 1 and 2 that happened at some point? *I'm only going to answer if I can be the one who gets to actually apply the usual shenanigans* 14/21 - 2000 15/21 - 3000 16/21 - 4000 17/21 - 5000 18/21 - 6000 19/21 - 8000 20/21 - 10000 21/21 - 15000 Part 2 1. What will Kung Fu Panda's OW be? 49.15M 2. What will be the combined Saturday of 50 shades and finest hours 7.89M 3. What will be the total weekend gross of ALL the films reported on BOM with a one word title? 4.82M Part 3 2. Revenant 5. 50 Shades 7. Ride Along 9. 13 12. Big Short 15. Sisters 3/6 - 2000 4/6 - 5000 5/6 - 8000 6/6 - 12000

Bah. I wrote my little song, but then forgot to come back Wednesday morning and put in my own predicts like I usually do. Oh well. ScreenRant.com has again failed to put out predicts in a timely fashion. Looks like last week they put them out Thursday afternoon/evening some time which doesn't do us much good. If they keep this up another week, I'm finally going to be done with them. The "Misc" spot is going to ShowBuzzDaily this week. Our predicts are pretty optimistic on 50 Shades and especially Finest Hours (always a little worrying when our lowest predict is higher than BO.com's predict), but just about in the middle on KFP3. Interestingly, our KFP3 predict has a ratio of 9.38%, making it the movie of which we are the most confident in our prediction, ever (prior winner was HT2 which we actually missed by a lot, but we were the closest of the predictors). So, we'll see how it turns out. As usual, I went through the various predicts (15 for everything, just like last week despite me missing) and here's what we ended up with: 50 Shades of Black Mean: 12.9M Median: 12.4M StnDev: 3.85M Ratio (StnDev/Mean): 29.92% High: 21M Low: 7M BO.com 8.5M Deadline 10.5M ScreenRant.com Variety 9.5M Misc 9.5M Finest Hours Mean: 14.6M Median: 14M StnDev: 3.36M Ratio (StnDev/Mean): 22.99% High: 21M Low: 9.7M BO.com 9.2M Deadline 10.5M ScreenRant.com Variety 10M Misc 10M Kung Fu Panda 3 Mean: 49.0M Median: 49.0M StnDev: 4.6M Ratio (StnDev/Mean): 9.38% High: 57M Low: 43M BO.com 51M Deadline 40M ScreenRant.com Variety 40M Misc 49.5M

Crap! I forgot to put in my own predicts. Nuts.

So, our total net worth is the two columns added together, right? If that's the case, I think you might be off on a couple folks. Simionski has done well, but I don't see how anyone could be up $58M already.

Ah, ty, my bad Plz cancel my 30% of Triple 9. I'll take the last 15% of Zoolander 2 instead.

I'll take 30% of Triple 9.

Diversification is the only free lunch.

Turns out, throwing your hands up and saying "10 for everything" would have been a very solid predicting strategy last weekend. Another week where our predicts weren't actually bad in a vacuum, but everyone else nailed it. We had the worst predicts on 5th Wave and The Boy, and second worst on Dirty Grandpa. 5th Wave Prediction: 12.3M +/- 4.23M (1 standard deviation) Actual: 10.3M (off by 2.0M, so 0.48 stndev) Not great but not bad. Ms Moretz has already appeared in movies grossing $706M in her career, but not much oomph here. Best predict was department store basement at 9.8M. The Boy Prediction: 8.4M +/- 1.91M (1 standard deviation) Actual: 10.8M (off by 2.4M, so 1.26 stndev) Disappointingly off. Best predict was by TalismanRing, at 10.2M. Dirty Grandpa Prediction: 13.6M +/- 2.93M (1 standard deviation) Actual: 11.1M (off by 2.5M, so 0.87 stndev) Meh, but not terrible. Best predict was, again, by TalismanRing at 10.3M. Wow. That's quite a couple of weeks by TalismanRing.

Abstain For now. Though coming back and changing my abstain to an actual guess isn't working out super well on the ratio one.

Norm

I think someone already got the last 15% for Zoolander 2.

10% Kung Fu Panda