Summer Movie Wager 2018 – The Results!

The /Filmcast does this thing every year where they pick what they each think will be the top 10 movies of the summer in terms of domestic box office performance. One enterprising listener created a website to coordinate the whole Summer Movie Wager and opened it up to everyone, so this year I figured I’d play along. I posted my ranking way back in April, and it appears that I’ve done reasonably well!

  • I scored 73 points according to the strange but not quite nonsensical scoring system used for the wager
  • This was enough to rank me above all of the “official” entrants from the /Filmcast (Dave Chen pulled out a last minute coup with a score of 67 because The Meg snuck into the top 10 right near the deadline – an event that also helped me considerably).
  • I ranked 444 in the Global Leaderboard, which is decent considering there were 3800+ players
  • The winner of the Global Leaderboard scored a whopping 96 points, only missing two picks dead on (which, naturally, involved Solo)

Not too shabby. Let’s take a closer look at the results. Scores were based on a fixed timeframe (ending September 3/Labor Day Weekend) and there are various bonuses for ranking the picks exactly (i.e. if you get #1 or #10 correct, you get 13 points, if you get any between dead-on, you get 10 points, and the further away from the correct rank you are, the less points you get, etc…) I did pretty darned good, especially considering that I didn’t put all that much time or thought into it.

  1. Avengers: Infinity War ($678,781,267, My Rank: #1, 13 points) – Duh. Pretty much everyone had this and it was the clear no-brainer of the season.
  2. Incredibles 2 ($602,579,381, My Rank: #2, 10 points) – I had this much higher than most people, but that turned out to be a wise choice. I was worried that my love for the original was coloring my ranking here, but it turns out that my assumption that it would be the “kids movie of choice” this summer was right on.
  3. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ($415,210,470, My Rank: #5, 5 points) – I expected this to fall off (due to the inherent crappiness of the first Jurrasic World), and it did, just not as much as I expected/hoped.
  4. Deadpool 2 ($318,454,369, My Rank: #3, 7 points) – I was hoping for a bit of a bump up from the first film’s popularity, but this would up with a modest decrease. In any case, the margin between #3 and #4 is about $100 million, so it wasn’t even really close.
  5. Ant-Man and the Wasp ($213,977,857, My Rank: #6, 7 points) – A strong showing for this one, about in line with my projections. In fact, if Solo did just a teensy bit better, it would have been dead on. The margin between the two is a mere $275 Thousand(ish).
  6. Solo: A Star Wars Story ($213,706,487, My Rank: #4, 5 points) – This was definitely a big question mark and yep, I overestimated the power of the Star Wars brand. Many reasons this could have fallen this low on the list, and apparently this was the “single biggest mistake” on my list. I suspect that’s not rare for a lot of these. Especially given the razor thin margin between #5 and #6.
  7. Mission: Impossible – Fallout ($206,661,700, My Rank: #8, 7 points) – I had this a little lower due to its release date (I mean, it’s still going reasonably strong, even if the wager is complete – a little more time and it could easily have jumped a few spots, actually), but I should not have worried. A tough one to estimate, but at least I was only one off.
  8. Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation ($162,844,423, My Rank: Dark Horse, 1 point) – The power of the kids’ movie (and I’m guessing a rapping Dracula) gets this one higher than expected. This was the one Dark Horse pick that I kinda regretted not putting on the list, but it’s not like it did that well.
  9. Ocean’s 8 ($139,211,301, My Rank: #7, 5 points) – I was a little overzealous about this one; still not much to really comment on here. It was a fun movie and it did correspondingly well.
  10. The Meg ($123,802,883, My Rank: #10, 13 points) – I was worried about the release date of this, which didn’t allow for much time to make the needed money, but damn, I somehow hit this right on. As the summer went on, I was regretting this pick, but it turns out that August being a wasteland and dumping ground for bad movies makes a difference.
  11. Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again ($118,120,770, My Rank: #8, 0 points) – This was the #10 movie right up until, like, the last second, which meant I was not doing so hot. So even though The Meg overtaking this dropped one of my picks outside the top 10, it was a good thing since I hit The Meg right on and thus got the bonus points.

Just to note my remaining “Dark Horse” picks:

  • Christopher Robin – In some ways, I’m a dumb-dumb, because this movie basically had no chance of actually making the top 10. Then again, I didn’t actually put it in the top 10 and I did actually get all 10 represented somewhere, so there is that.
  • Skyscraper – I was worried about The Rock’s scattered track record and the fact that this was the third movie this year. It seems my skepticism was warranted.

Phew. That was actually a whole lot of fun, and even though paying attention to the results throughout the season is kinda silly (the points and rankings can swing wildly as movies are released, etc…), it’s still fun, and something I kept checking. If you like following movies, this is a recommended little game!

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