The smell wafting from our deep-frier at Player Affinity has beckoned you to play Box Office Turkey! Predict which five movies will place in the top five of this weekend's U.S. domestic box office. It’s that easy. I will make my own predictions here and explain them to you each week to give you some sort of reference point. It's then your job to enter a comment with your top five.
This is Week #29. It’s never too late to start! The first week you predict is the first week you enter the Box Office Turkey competition. For every correct prediction each week, you earn a point. Points are cumulative. The game keeps going on and on forever and ever except we will reset everyone back to zero -- let's say -- once a year. Each week there will be at least two dinners: a weekend dinner for the users who guessed the most correct and a box office wizard for the user with the most points to date. The goal is to be Box Office Wizard for as long as you can. I'll pick an end date for the year at some point and then whoever has the most becomes the year's box office wizard. Maybe by the team that happens, Pilgrim Affinity will be so wildly popular that we'll have some cool free stuff to give the Box Office Wizard of the Year. Regardless, it's worth giving a try. What do you have to lose? Gobble.
Last Week's Top Jive
Week #28 Turkey(s): Everyone but Me - 3 pts
Current Box Office Turkey(s): SimonSays - 78 Pts
After I heckled you all last week, you ended up beating me. "Three Days" didn't have such a good titular time period this weekend. Simon now has a one-point edge heading into the holiday. Remember this week that we're still just interested in 3-day totals and that you must predict by Thursday at 12 noon.
Remember, only submissions in the comment section count and they must be made by 12:00 PM THURSDAY. Check our weekly recap posting late afternoon every Monday for the box office figures of the weekend. Remember, we count the WEEKEND ACTUALS, not the ESTIMATES announced on Sundays. On 4- or 5-day weekends, only the 3-day total matters.
Here are this week's new contenders followed by my predictions.
New Cranberries this Weekend
Tangled
Burlesque
Faster
Love and Other DrugsMy Top Five Turduckens
While you can attribute the "final chapter" being the chief reason Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 1 had the biggest opening of the series thus far, I attribute a lot of it to the November release. "Harry" has historically done better as indicated by "The Goblet of Fire" being the last film to have a huge opening and not so coincidentally coming out in November. As such, I'm not predicting as monstrous of a drop as the huge opening weekend films tend to have. I'm going to say $60 million for week No. 2, easily enough for first. Keep in mind that I'm still predicting 3-day totals (Fri - Sun), not the 5-day weekend.
After a film of "Harry Potter"-magnitude comes out the weekend before Thanksgiving, few films truly compete the next week, so I've got some small totals predicted for the other films.
I do, however, reserve my only optimism of the weekend for Tangled. The Disney film should probably be good for at least $30 million, but I might even say closer to $40 M given the holiday. Family films do very well, as you'd imagine, when there's no school and a holiday. That said, it should come as no surprise that I think Megamind will come in third, barely dropping. I think $12 million makes sense.
That's about the number I have for Burlesque. I had the musical pegged for at just $10 million initially, but a release in more than 3,000 theaters has me thinking closer to $15 million.
Last, I'm going to give the fifth place prize to Faster. The R-rating and low profile of CBS Films, however, should keep that flick from making serious noise. I've got $10-12 million. Any higher and you can thank The Rock. It should fend off "Unstoppable" and "Due Date" easily. As for "Love and Other Drugs," I've got it below $10 million, but I'm not sure where exactly it will finish. Outside of the top five, however, is likely.
