This post has been adapted from the weekly newsletter that goes out to participants in Vulture’s Movies Fantasy League. Haven’t heard of the MFL? It’s a free game we’re running, for which you select a team of eight movies that were released in 2022. Those movies earn points based on box-office performance, critical reviews, and awards success, and whichever team has the most points following the Oscars wins a Roku TV. Plus you get this newsletter every week! You only have until November 21 to sign up, so don’t waste any more time — draft your team today.
Black Panther: Points Forever (Or At Least Weeks)
What this past weekend’s release of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever means for the Marvel cinematic universe, the career of Ryan Coogler, and the contractual pull of special guest star Richard Schiff remains to be seen. But we do now have a sense of Wakanda’s impact on the fantasy league.
After a $180 million domestic box-office take for its opening weekend, Wakanda is the first major points haul of the Vulture Movies Fantasy League season. At two points for every $5 million earned, that’s 72 points plus a bunch of bonus points for clearing the $50 million mark (+10), clearing the $100 million mark (+20), and finishing No. 1 at the box office for the weekend (+10). That makes for a 112-point weekend, and if you’re one of the 547 players who drafted Wakanda before it opened, all those points are yours. Enjoy your commanding lead on every team that didn’t draft Wakanda.
So where do things go from here? In terms of projections, Wakanda is expected to keep climbing toward the $500 million mark and should have a lock on first place at the box office (and further ten-point bonuses) for a few more weeks — until Avatar: The Way of Water makes landfall. Wakanda is hovering around 85 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, which means another ten or 20 points depending on where that number finally lands. (Remember, for fantasy-league purposes, Rotten Tomatoes scores will lock on January 2.)
Then it’s on to awards season, when Wakanda faces a more uncertain future. That 85 percent RT score is about ten points behind where the first Black Panther stood, and that may well be the difference between a well-received Marvel film and a Best Picture nominee. Still, even if a Best Picture nomination proves to be a steeper hill to climb this time around, there are awards points to be had. Most of Black Panther’s seven Oscar nominations seem repeatable with Wakanda: Costume Design, Production Design, Sound, Original Score, and Original Song (Rihanna!) are all in play again this year. And there’s still a chance that Angela Bassett could show up on some Best Supporting Actress lists. Deciding whether that is enough to buttress those box-office points and endure the onslaught of whichever films become Best Picture front-runners is — as Bassett might say — the job. The job of fantasy-league drafters, that is.
Behind the Box Office
Wakanda Forever was the biggest box-office story this week, but for fantasy-league purposes, a few other movies are worth looking at. Black Adam accrued another $8.6 million this weekend. Since the fantasy league kicked off on October 31, the movie has pulled in $39 million, so depending on when you drafted your team, that’s a nice handful of points if you picked it. George Clooney and Julia Roberts’s Ticket to Paradise has brought in $22 million since October 31. Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile had pulled in just $8 million since October 31, but it’s only dropping 5 percent week over week, which means this could be a slow burn of a success.
Indie Spirits Outlook
Next Tuesday kicks off the precursor nomination stage of awards season with the nominations for the Independent Spirit Awards. (Yes, the Gotham Awards announced, but if they want to announce their year-end nominations in October, they’re going to get left out of this discussion.) This should prove to be the first big nomination haul for a bunch of awards-season front-runners. Some of the changes implemented for this year’s contest will impact honorees — including the introduction of gender-neutral acting categories (ten lead nominees, ten supporting nominees, five “breakthrough†nominees) and an increase to a $30 million budget cap. The latter paves the way for nominations for A24’s Everything Everywhere All at Once, so expect that to show up in a ton of categories. Other major contenders should be Focus Features’ Tár, Searchlight’s The Banshees of Inisherin, Orion’s Women Talking, and A24’s The Whale and The Inspection.
Less certain is what small-purchase films in the fantasy league will benefit from a stray Spirits nod or two. Is this where Sundance faves Nanny, Cha Cha Real Smooth, and Good Luck to You, Leo Grande pull in some points? Is Aftersun going to have a big day? Does Pearl’s Mia Goth get her awards-season moment? We’ll know in a week!
Dates to Look Out For
November 18: She Said, Maria Schrader’s movie about the reporters who broke the Harvey Weinstein sexual-assault story, enters wide release, and at $15 in the fantasy league, it’s the biggest-ticket item to open wide next weekend.
November 21: The deadline to submit a team entry: It’s coming soon, so tell your friends who haven’t drafted a team to get on it!
Quick Housekeeping
➽ Next week’s newsletter will be sent on Wednesday, November 23, following the first award-nomination announcement of the MFL season, the Indie Spirits, on Tuesday, November 22.
➽ We’ve received emails asking how you can check the score for your teams. Short answer: You can’t — yet. Next week’s newsletter will feature the debut of our leaderboard. You’ll find the top 25 teams in the email, then you can visit our Vulture Movies Fantasy League landing page to see the complete list of scores and teams. Don’t worry: Not much has happened so far, and most of the season is still to come. There will be plenty of time to fixate on your score, we promise.
Joe Reid is a Vulture contributor and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast.