LET…US…NEVER…SPEAK…OF…IT…AGAIN.
-Po Huit, TAGN FML Chatter
Week nine of our Fantasy Movie League has passed, and it was a week of disappointment for many, some more than others. The available picks were.
The Maze Runner $358 Jumanji $222 The Greatest Showman $134 The Post $129 12 Strong $128 Den of Thieves $127 Hostiles $126 Paddington 2 $93 The Shape of Water $86 Phantom Thread $81 Three Billboards $68 Best of the Rest $67 Forever My Girl $64 The Commuter $58 Star Wars $57
Week eight was one of those weeks where those who pay close attention to the last minute data were granted insight into an obvious winner. Week nine, on the other hand, was a week where the eventual correct pick, Hostiles, had mixed projections from various sources and so we seemed to have all talked ourselves out of going with it.
This was especially painful for Po Huit who, in missing a week, has been prone to gambling on outlying options in order to catch up. On Monday night last week he declared he was going with seven screens of Hostiles and one screen of Paddington in the TAGN chatter forum on the FML site.
I have to admit that I considered Hostiles as well at a couple of points over the course of the week. At the high end of the projections I saw it would have been a winner, but the low end was really low, at which point it was a non-starter. Meanwhile the projections for The Post were pretty consistent and seemed to indicate that it was a strong candidate for the best performer bonus.
In the MCats slack channel a group of us came to the same conclusion and, sharing our cards at one point, it seemed that most of us were going with seven screens of The Post and one screen of Paddington. In an effort to not have a stagnant week I changed to The Shape of Water while Aure abandoned The Post for another lineup.
My Winter Week Nine Picks
Meanwhile Po Huit lost his nerve by Thursday and also joined so many of us on the bandwagon for The Post. Even the last minute Thursday night numbers were not very informative. Hostiles did okay, but not as well as Den of Thieves did the previous week. Furthermore, since Hostiles has been out in limited release for a while now, Thursday night previews wouldn’t count towards its weekend, so there was nothing there to make me change from The Post.
The lockout time came and revealed that nobody in the Meta League bet heavily on Hostiles. The only person to pick it was Liore, who had a single screen of it in her lineup.
And then the first set of estimates came out late Saturday morning that indicated that projections for The Post were overly optimistic while the high end forecasts for the Hostiles were on the money, so the perfect pick for the week ended up being Po Huit’s initial pick, much to his dismay, as the quote at the top might indicate.
However, there was one minor upset, when The Shape of Water managed to eke out a win over Paddington in the box office, something I was betting on, so in the end Po didn’t miss out on the perfect pick, which ended up being worth about $95 million. A mere 107 people got the perfect pick, down from 981 last week.
Winter Week Nine Perfect Pick
However, his original Hostiles heavy pick would have been worth $90 million. Instead he ended up slumming with the rest of us down the chart rather than gaining on anybody. So the week nine results for the Meta League ended up as:
- Dr Liore’s Evil House of Pancakes (M) – $73,692,629
- Biyondios! Kabuki & Cinema (T) – $71,132,257
- Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre (M) – $71,106,570
- SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights (T) – $70,705,742
- The Filthy Fleapit (T) – $69,723,620
- Dan’s Decadent Decaplex (M) – $69,672,540
- Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex (M) – $69,672,540
- Wilhelm’s Broken Isles Bijou (T/M) – $69,672,540
- Ben’s X-Wing Express (M) – $69,418,420
- Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex (T) – $69,418,420
- Logan’s Luxurious Thaumatrope (M) – $69,418,420
- Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite (T) – $69,418,420
- I HAS BAD TASTE (T) – $66,893,415
- Paks’ Pancakes & Pics (T) – $66,444,870
- Kraut Screens (T) – $65,589,752
- Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex (T) – $63,784,347
- Joanie’s Joint (T) – $62,517,054
- Elly’s Elemental E-Plex (M) – $40,033,732
- TAGN Movie Obsession – players from it marked with a (T)
- MCats Multiplex – players from it marked with an (M)
There wasn’t a huge gap between the top and bottom this week. If it hadn’t been for Elly, the gap between first and last would have been about $11 million.
Liore took the week, being the only one to even have a screen of Hostiles, Biyondios managed second on a slate of Maze Runner, Jumanji, Greatest Showman, and Star Wars, while Aure came in third, validating her abandonment of the over-player lineup with The Post. And then there was everybody who went heavy on The Post followed by other assorted picks.
Of the seven people all-in on The Post, the top three, who went with The Shape of Water, beat the bottom four, who went with Paddington, by a mere $254,120. Corr moved that much closer to Ben this week. You take every advantage you get I guess. Elly was the outlier, going with Jumanji and seven screens of The Commuter.
And a side surprise was that the film Padmaavat popped up to 10th place for the weekend, despite being in only 324 theaters, making it the Best of the Rest. It is the most expensive Hindi film ever produced, but it is the controversy that got it up the list. It has been banned in a number of places overseas.
So after an middling performance across the board the Meta League ended up looking like this:
- Ben’s X-Wing Express (M) – $1,006,350,981
- Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex (M) – $996,116,095
- Wilhelm’s Broken Isles Bijou (T/M) – $945,303,784
- Biyondios! Kabuki & Cinema (T) – $935,038,182
- Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre (M) – $929,618,554
- Paks’ Pancakes & Pics (T) – $913,807,490
- Dan’s Decadent Decaplex (M) – $888,630,672
- Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite (T) – $862,787,129
- Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex (T) – $843,041,005
- SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights (T) – $823,462,488
- Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex (T) – $784,332,849
- I HAS BAD TASTE (T) – $752,926,650
- Kraut Screens (T) – $751,612,840
- The Filthy Fleapit (T) – $742,165,062
- Logan’s Luxurious Thaumatrope (M) – $739,159,951
- Dr Liore’s Evil House of Pancakes (M) – $735,413,781
- Elly’s Elemental E-Plex (M) – $730,434,667
- Joanie’s Joint (T) – $729,718,727
The only change in that list was Elly dropping down two slots. I did drop Bean Movie Burrito from the list. Not only did they start late, but they missed picking three weeks now, so it seems unfair to keep listing them.
And so it goes as we move into week eleven with the following choices:
Winchester $274 Jumanji $261 The Maze Runner $230 The Greatest Showman $167 The Post $126 The Shape of Water $114 Hostiles $113 Den of Thieves $90 12 Strong $89 Paddington 2 $75 Three Billboards $71 I, Tonya $61 Phantom Thread $56 Star Wars $46 Forever My Girl $45
The Commuter dropped from the list and there is no Best of the Rest choice this week.
The new movie this week is Winchester, which takes place in a house about two miles from where I live, while I, Tonya returns to the list this week despite having only hit 16th place in the box office for week nine. I guess it is on more screens this week. Still, it seems like another shot for Best of the Rest would be better, even if you keep I, Tonya on the list, but what do I know? I bet on The Post.
So Winchester has Helen Mirren, which speaks to its merits in my book, but is the world ready for a crazy lady in San Jose who made her contractor rich with constant additions to her house? I lived down the street from essentially that situation at our last house, and that didn’t get a film. Okay, I guess it is supposed to be a horror film… historical horror drama maybe… and I regularly and consistently under estimate how they will do. I suppose I should marvel that they got Helen Mirren for it.
Meanwhile, Jumanji still seems to be strong and there is the question as to whether or not films nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars this year will continue to see a boost in ticket sales. The only thing my gut says is, “Stay away from The Post!” It has failed to meet forecasts every week.
from The Ancient Gaming Noob http://ift.tt/2nrdVlc
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