All that celebration you’re hearing out there in the entertainment world over the last few days must surely indicate that everybody knows we’re just a few short days from Opening Day of the Movies Fantasy League’s 2023 season. Excitement is at a fever pitch! The big thing to remember right now is that rosters must be selected by this Thursday, September 28. Then on September 29, your films will start earning points. Please do what you can to ensure that no one you love (including yourselves — love yourselves!) gets left behind. Friends don’t let friends space out on the Movies Fantasy League roster deadline.
With this week’s update, we’re going to skim last weekend’s box office, discuss the implications of the WGA strike ending, and highlight a new League attraction. Then we’ll end with a quick look at new additions to the list of eligible movies. Lotta housekeeping to do before company shows up.
Box Office Report
For intelligence-gathering purposes, let’s start with a quick peek at the box office for the September 23–24 weekend, the last release window before ticket revenue starts translating into fantasy-league points. (A reminder: Every $1 million earned equals one point.) The Nun II continues to cling to the top spot by the tips of its ghoulish fingers. Meanwhile, Dumb Money added about 600 screens and hopped into the top ten with $2.5 million and the week’s best per-screen average.
Looking ahead, if you fancy the idea of jumping out to an early lead and maybe showing up on the MFL leaderboard in October, consider The Creator. Word is that Gareth Edwards’s sci-fi action flick is very good, and it’ll be playing on all the large-format screens this weekend. Or maybe the American public’s love affair with Jigsaw isn’t over yet and Saw X makes a splash. Of the two, Saw X has the potential to be a modest horror hit at the box office, while there’s an outside chance that The Creator is the next big sci-fi thing. Worth considering if you’re a late drafter.
‘WGA’ Stands for ‘We Got an Agreement’
Sunday night brought news that the Writers Guild of America had reached a “tentative agreement†with the movie studios, and pending ratification, it will end the 140-plus-day strike. This is big news for Hollywood, particularly if it serves as a road map for the studios to address the SAG-AFTRA demands and get the industry working again. For the MFL, an end to both strikes will mean no more having to worry that your yet-to-open movie selection might Dune its way out to 2024. Speaking of the desert planet, while some of us may have floated fanciful notions that the second part of Denis Villeneuve’s space-opera epic might find its way back to its original November release date, don’t hold your breath. SAG-AFTRA is still on strike, and it’s the actors’ absence that caused these movies to flee to 2024 in the first place. Besides, Dune’s IMAX slots have all been given to other movies by now. So I’m sorry if my tweet got the hopes up of anybody who drafted Dune Part Two and was hoping for a miracle.
Introducing: The Podcaster League
MFL veterans and podcast-listening lunatics may already know that I co-host the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, revisiting movies that failed to live up to their early Academy Award hype (check out our new episode on Bradley Cooper in Burnt!). So I’m pretty thrilled to announce that a new League feature has opened the door to an epic battle of movie podcasters.
Last year, a toggle on the MFL leaderboard enabled players to filter the standings and see how members of the Vulture staff were doing in the game — meaning you could compare your own score against theirs. This time around, Vulture invited an array of film podcasters to join a special mini-league, which everyone else will be able to watch and compete against. The list of participants includes the hosts of these shows:
Eye of the Duck
Filmspotting
Little Gold Men
Next Picture Show
Screen Drafts
Subtitles On
This Had Oscar Buzz
Unspooled
We Hate Movies
Cows in the Field
Film & Whiskey
Blank Check
The Mixed Reviews
Even better, the fans of some of those shows are using the mini-league feature to compete amongst themselves. My This Had Oscar Buzz co-host Chris Feil and I are delighted to see that more than 400 of our listeners turned out for the “AllOfUsGarys†group. Blank Check’s “Blankies†is closing in on 100 players, Little Gold Men’s listener league “LittleGoldies†is nearing 200, and Filmspotting’s newly formed and aptly-named “Filmspotting†league is starting to fill up. Which show’s audience will perform best in the game? And will the fans of other shows come together in their own leagues? Only time will tell. (Though in the latter case, the next three days will tell. Remember: deadline Thursday!)
Add ’Em Up, Bobby
We’ll wrap up with a couple 11th-hour additions to the eligible movie list:
➼ Richard Linklater’s Hit Man — a hilarious crowd-pleaser featuring a brilliant Glen Powell lead performance — was a huge hit at Venice and Toronto (yay). So much so that it got purchased for distribution soon thereafter (yay!) … by Netflix (noooooooo!). That roller coaster of emotions (plus the caveat that we don’t know if it will open in 2023) is why we’ve priced it at a modest $5.
âž¼ Another Netflix movie, the Jon Batiste documentary American Symphony, is a documentary contender that can be had for $3.
Happy hunting if you still have yet to draft. We’ll see you on the other side of the starting line.