Welcome to week four of our 2014 Summer Box-Office Challenge!
Think of it as a summer-long contest for movie-lovers ‐ you’ll make predictions and guesses as to which summer movies will rule the box-office each week, we award points and at the end of the contest the three top point-earners will each win a Blu-ray/DVD prize pack! First place will win ten (10) Blu-ray/DVD titles released throughout the coming summer, second place wins five (5) and third place wins two (2). We’ll have bonus questions each week as well to help bolster your point totals and keep you in the running.
The box office actuals from this past weekend unsurprisingly put Godzilla at #1, but his arrival hasn’t altered our own #1 and #2 as Husain and AKFilmfan retain their top spots. The remaining three positions have been shaken up a bit though by some newcomers. Godzilla took in $93.19 million this weekend while Million Dollar Arm failed to beat Trouble With the Curve taking in less than that film’s $12.2m opening weekend. Here are the current standings for our contest.
- Husain ‐ 11 points
- AKFilmfan ‐ 9 pts
- Starkweather ‐ 9 pts
- Spencer Connell ‐ 6 pts
- Thomas McCallum ‐ 6 pts
And now it’s on to week four! Check out the challenge questions below and play along in the comments section.
Godzilla was always a lock for #1, but few people expected it to open this high. Even the so-called experts and Hollywood box office trackers had it pegged closer to $70m. The question now though is can the film hold off the contenders and hang on to the top spot. This is the first week with more than one challenger ‐ Adam Sandler’s latest, Blended, is hoping to re-capture the “magic” of his previous collaborations with Drew Barrymore (The Wedding Singer and 50 First Dates) and Bryan Singer has returned to the X-Men franchise he started with X-Men: Days of Future Past.
Sandler had been in a minor slump recently with two box office duds in a row (Jack and Jill, That’s My Boy), but he rebounded somewhat with last year’s Grown Ups 2. It’s entirely possible that film’s success was due to David Spade though [pause for laughter], so it’s unclear if Sandler’s fans are ready support his solo efforts again. Singer’s film meanwhile is a sequel to the franchise’s lowest grossing film, X-Men: First Class. The new film reunites those characters with ones from the earlier trilogy, but will that be enough to pull audiences back in again?
To enter, leave a comment below with your answers to these questions by 11:59 pm Central time Wednesday:
- Predict the #1 film at the box office for May 23–25 and how much it will earn: The closest correct answer earns 5 points, the 2nd closest earns 3 points and a correct guess within one million dollars earns an additional 2 points. (Example: “Cold in July, $19m”)
- Bonus Question: What will the #2 film be for the weekend? A correct answer earns two points.
Here are the incredibly simple rules:
- The cutoff for predictions is 11:59 pm Central time each Wednesday, and there will be no exceptions.
- Predictions are for Friday to Sunday domestic box office as reported by Box Office Mojo.
- The contest runs through the weekend of July 25–27 (that will be the final round).
- Be sure your Disqus info is accurate and consistent as that’s how we’ll be tracking your guesses week to week and contacting our three winners.
- Comment edits made AFTER the cutoff time constitute cheating and will result in player forfeit.
We’ll return next Monday for week 5 and our updated leader-board. Thanks for playing and good luck!