Quit f*@%ing around! It’s Box Office Wizard! 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 #27. It’s never too late to start! The first week you predict is the first week you enter the Box Office Wizard 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 winners: a weekend wizard 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, Player 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?
Last Week's Top Five
Week #26 Wizard(s): SimonSays, Steven C, Sallas - 3 pts
Current Box Office Wizard(s): Steven C, SimonSays - 72 Pts
Saw 3D fell a ridiculous amount (and from first to fifth) and RED only dropped a smidgeon. Go figure. Another perfect week ruined at the bottom two.
Remember, only submissions in the comment section count and they must be made by 12:00 PM SATURDAY. 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-day weekends, only the 3-day total matters.
Here are this week's new contenders followed by my predictions.
New Contenders this Weekend
Morning Glory (Wed.)
Unstoppable
SkylineLike most animated films, Megamind should have a good second week. I'm not projecting anything to beat my estimate for the DreamWorks film, which is $28 million. Now it gets a bit tougher.
Tony Scott/Denzel Washington films tend to fair decently -- why else would they keep collaborating? Denzel hasn't made a film in 7 years that hasn't made at least $20 million so long as it was released in more than 2,000 theaters. Expect Unstoppable to make $20-25 million, which is good enough to beat my projected drop for Due Date, which is around $20 million.
Now it gets really tricky. The difference between these final two films is star power. That's why even with a five-day weekend, I think Morning Glory will beat Skyline.
Skyline probably caught some people's attention in the marketing with visual effects, but there's no additional draw unless you are a fan of Dexter (David Zayas) or Scrubs (Donald Faison). Morning Glory, on the other hand, has McAdams, Ford and Keaton. I see $15 million for that film and $10-12 million for Skyline.
