This is the latest edition of the Movies Fantasy League newsletter. The drafting window for this season has closed, but you can still sign up to get the newsletter, which provides a weekly recap of box-office performance, awards nominations, and critical chatter on all the buzziest movies.
A box-office cooldown weekend — when Taylor Swift and the killer animatronic bears of Five Nights at Freddy’s did muted battle at the top of the charts — was the perfect moment for the expansion of Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla into multiplexes to begin its run in earnest.
This week’s MFL update includes a look at Coppola’s milestone weekend, a dive into teams at the top of the leaderboard (and which are best positioned to stay there), and a shout of appreciation for some truly delightful team names.
Box Office: Priscillas of the Flower Moon
It may not seem like much, but the $5.1 million Priscilla pulled in this weekend was enough to set at least one box-office record: It’s the first time a Sofia Coppola–directed movie has finished in the weekend box-office top five. It was also incredibly close to being Coppola’s highest-grossing box-office weekend, falling only a few thousand short of Marie Antoinette’s $5.3 million in 2006. That means a tidy +5 points for anyone who drafted Priscilla — and the “career-best box office†narrative, combined with Cailee Spaeny’s Venice win for Best Actress, gives Priscilla a chance to be a player in the awards race, albeit one with a low ceiling.
Elsewhere, Five Nights at Freddy’s took the top spot at the box office for the second weekend in a row (+20), upping its grand total to $113 million, clearing the $100 million bonus threshold (+40), and clocking in at 213 fantasy points in two weeks.
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour is still going strong in second place, with a $166 million cumulative box-office total and 266 total fantasy points.
In other box-office news, Killers of the Flower Moon cleared the $50 million bonus threshold over the weekend, upping its fantasy-point total to 72. And Anatomy of a Fall got onto the scoreboard, expanding into 178 more theaters and clearing the $1 million mark. (With its 20 previous points from the Gotham Awards nominations, Anatomy stands at 21.)
Leaderboard
For the second straight week, our overall points leader is Cinemawithcj, which is up to 781 points. Poole is better than Hawkins is only ten points behind with 771. It’s still early in the league and much is likely to change, but we’re starting to get a sense of which rosters are built to last — any team that has gotten fat off points from movies like The Exorcist: Believer and Saw X may not have the roster spots available for films that will rake in the points during awards season.
Let’s go inside the numbers.
Being at the top invites a spotlight, so we’ll start with Cinemawithcj. Their roster contains only three awards hopefuls: Barbie, Killers of the Flower Moon, and Poor Things. Each of those films could be huge points earners during awards season. But their roster is cluttered with, among other things, PAW Patrol and Exorcist, which puts pressure on the awards movies to overdeliver (and for Wonka to not completely bomb).
Contrast that with NPHoffman, which slid from tenth place down to 64th this week — a consequence of not rostering Five Nights at Freddy’s. They seem like a team that’s built to endure the shift into awards season: Their roster has The Eras Tour to prop up box office, plus Oppenheimer, Past Lives, Poor Things, and American Fiction. An Oppenheimer sweep, with the other three contributing key wins in acting and screenplay categories over the course of the season, could really pay off.
Last year, only two movies — Avatar: The Way of Water and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever — made any kind of box-office noise. This year, we have Taylor, Freddy, and a handful of other movies that could have meaningful box-office impact. Even awards plays like Killers of the Flower Moon already have a not-insignificant box-office component to their scores. Last year, you could be a top-finishing team and not have drafted either of the box-office behemoths because awards scoring dwarfed box-office scoring. The big unanswered question this year is whether a roster with all awards plays and zero box-office draws can succeed. The Independent Spirit Awards won’t nominate for another month and will be followed by the major critics’ organizations, so we’ll know more then.
Team Name Spotlight
We’re always looking at the leaderboard hoping to find some all-star team name worthy of a shout-out. This week, we’re spotlighting:
âž¼ Gandhi60Seconds, a great world leader and a great Giovanni Ribisi movie, together at last
âž¼ Pregnant Midge Campbell, bringing together Emerald Fennell and Scarlett Johansson in a way we can only hope results in a new movie with great needle drops
âž¼ Two MFL enthusiasts who were so eager to play that they came back from the dead: orville redenbacher and Randy Meeks
âž¼ And finally, the Chicago Way, which knows the rules of fantasy league state that when they send one of yours to the hospital, you send one of theirs to the morgue
Looking Ahead
Deep breath, MCU fans: The Marvels opens on Friday, and the box-office projections are grim. (And if the dripping-with-desperation final trailer is any indication, the studio thinks those projections are on target.) But grim for a Marvel movie is generally still pretty good, so points will be incoming for Marvels drafters.