Fantasy Box Office – Final Results
Ken Jones
Season Recap
It’s all over except for the tears. And I plan on exacting tears. The fall 2018 season of the Fantasy Box Office concluded on January 31. After winning the summer league, I successfully defended my title in the fall league with a dominant performance at the box office. This makes it 3 in four seasons. Like my freshly crowned champion New England Patriots in the NFL, yes, it’s a dynasty!
All of the rosters can be found below along with the final totals. Coming out of the draft, I thought I had a good roster. As it turned out, some pieces (Bohemian Rhapsody) were strong than I expected while others (The Grinch, Mary Poppins Returns) didn’t quite live up to my expectations. However, I still managed to eclipse the $500 million mark.
I did that despite not having a single movie that reached the $200 million cap threshold. In fact, there was only one movie that managed to hit that mark, Aquaman, which ended up crossing $200 million plateau with less than a week left to go. I honestly didn’t think anything was going to cap, which would have been a first. Aquaman helped to propel Paula into the second place spot. Paula went with a superhero-heavy lineup and it really paid off. Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse ended up wildly exceeding estimates and was beloved by critics. Sadly, the other three movies she supplemented those two with only ended up making less than $100 million combined. Venom was a box office hit, but its reviews hindered its earning. And unfortunately, Glass saw M. Night Shyamalan return to form, and not in a good way.
Greg was done in by Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald and the unwarranted First Man backlash. A Star Is Born was a bona fide blockbuster that produced a great return on investment. On a small level, Instant Family, The Mule, and On the Basis of Sex all performed well or better than reasonably expected. But First Man only garnered $39.5 million in revenue, at least in part because of ridiculous faux-outrage over the perceived lack of respect toward the American flag in the film (by people who hadn’t seen the movie, mind you). Fantastic Beasts feels like a classic case of diminishing returns on a franchise that has been extended beyond its own viability.
Chris had a roster that I thought was going to put him in last place. He went all in on Halloween and modest investments in other films. He lost a movie that got pushed back, and his replacement, Ben Is Back, was an uninspired pick to say the least. Mortal Engines was the bomb I expected it to be. Simply put, the only reason Chris didn’t end up in last place was because Bumblebee defied everything we thought we knew about Transformers movies and was one of the best reviewed movies of the holiday season. If it’s an average Transformers movie then he’s in last place.
But last place this time around belongs to Tim. Tim spent the most money on any one movie, devoting $34 to Ralph Breaks the Internet, which isn’t a terrible move, as evidenced by the reviews and revenue it made. He also made out well with Creed II almost hitting $100 million. Where Tim lost it was that none of the other movies beyond Vice managed to make more than $3.1 million. The Frontrunner never found an audience. Holmes & Watson was an unmitigated disaster. And Serenity was moved from the fall to a January release. That is normally a huge warning sign of a bad movie, but Tim never swapped it out for anything.
And so, because of that, Tim is the big loser and I am the big winner. This means that Tim has to watch a punishment movie of my choosing. Normally, we would wait to announce this at the next draft , but I’m going to do so here in this space. Now, the goal of the punishment movie is pretty self-explanatory and is intended to exact the most amount of pain on the viewer for the pleasure of the rest of the league. Now, I don’t know Tim as well as Paula, Chris, or Greg, so I had to do some research in order to reach my decision. According to Chris, Tim is a fan of anime. I can work with that.
So, with that in mind, I have chosen a live action adaptation of a very popular animated TV series that has anime elements. That movie is directed by someone who directed one of the movies on one of the rosters this fall. That director is M. Night Shyamalan. That movie is The Last Airbender. May God have mercy on your soul, Tim.
Final Standings
1. Ken - $514.1 million
$2 The House with the Clock in Its Walls (9/21) – (66% X $68.5 = $45.2)
$11 The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (11/2) – (34% X $54.9 = $18.7)
$11 Bohemian Rhapsody (11/2) (62% X $206.7 = $128.2)
$13 The Grinch (11/9) – (57% X 270.4 = $154.1)
$3 Widows (11/16) – (90% X $42.4 = $38.2)
$20 Mary Poppins Returns (12/19) – (78% X $166.3 = $129.7)
2. Paula - $459.6 million
$6 Venom (10/5) – (29% X $213.5 = $62)
$13 Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse (12/14) – (97% X $170.9 = $165.8)
$21 Aquaman (12/21) – (65% X $318.7 = $200*)
$0 Welcome To Marwen (12/21) – (31% X $10.8 = $3.3)
$10 Glass (1/18) – (36% X $79.1 = $28.5)
3. Greg - $421.2 million
$25 A Star Is Born (10/5) – (90% X $206.9 = $186.2)
$10 First Man (10/12) – (88% X $44.9 = $39.5)
$22 Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (11/16) – (37% X $159.2 = $58.9)
$1 Instant Family (11/16) – (82% X $67.4 = $55.3)
$0 The Mule (12/14) – (-$5 million penalty) (70% X $100.8 = $65.6)
$1 On the Basis of Sex (12/28) – (72% X $21.8 = $15.7)
4. Chris - $332.3 million
$8 Smallfoot (9/28) – (76% X $83.2 = $63.2)
$8 Night School (9/28) – (29% X $77.3 = $22.4)
$25 Halloween (10/19) – (79% X $159.3 = $125.8)
$0 Ben Is Back (12/7) – (80% X $3.6 = $2.9)
$4 Mortal Engines (12/14) – (26% X $16 = $4.2)
$6 Bumblebee (12/21) – (93% X $122.4 = $113.8)
+$3
5. Tim - $307.5 million
$1 The Front Runner (11/9) – (59% X $2 = $1.2)
$13 Creed 2 (11/23) – (83% X $115.5 = $98.9)
$34 Ralph Breaks the Internet (11/23) – (89% X $196.3 = $174.7)
$6 Holmes & Watson (12/25) – (10% X $30.5 = $3.1)
$3 Vice (12/25) – (66% X $42.9 = $28.3)
$3 Serenity (1/25) – (22% X $5.8 = $1.3)