Welcome to our first-ever Knock on Wood Movie Fantasy League dispatch! Every week (more or less), we’ll be bringing you a recap of the past weekend’s box office, alongside an overview of the new release films and an updated leaderboard, complete with full teams and points!
This past weekend was Easter weekend, which tends to be one of the softer holiday weekends in the spring/summer season, but even more importantly, it continued to be “spring break season.” Perhaps that was why this was the perfect weekend to release The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, the big debut this week and a certified overachiever. Its predecessor made over $1 billion worldwide, and this splashy sequel has already grabbed almost half that amount worldwide, though for this League, we’re strictly talking domestic numbers…that means the money it makes in the United States and Canada. Apologies to those who picked Super Mario; while the film is likely heading towards that billion-dollar mark, you won’t get quite as many points, but you will end up gaining a ton from its success.
This weekend, The Super Mario Galaxy movie got those fourteen lucky folks 295 box office-related points, plus an additional 20 for its No. 1 spot and 5 for its place in the Top 10. Altogether, that’s 320 points (remember: critical scores will be tallied and added the following weekend after a film’s release to ensure stabilization). That means an eleven-way tie for third place on this week’s leaderboard, which is available below.
Also opening this week is The Drama, a stylized dark comedy starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as a couple attempting to navigate…let’s just say, a tricky week in the lead-up to their wedding. It’s bizarre and silly (ironic, given the subject matter, which I won’t spoil here), and comes to us courtesy of Kristoffer Borgli, writer/director of the divine, underrated 2023 comedy Dream Scenario. It did not go the way of Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love, another strange film about marriage featuring a young movie star (which also, somehow, opened on 3000 screens across the country) and made a modest debut with $14 million domestic, and opened at No. 3, ensuring a 5-point bonus.
Therefore, those who drafted both Super Mario and The Drama for their team saw a tremendous windfall of points this week, resulting in a two-way tie. Whether or not it is sustainable for the next five months remains to be seen…
The third, and smallest, opening this week is A Great Awakening, a self-styled Christian propaganda film (no, really – on the line where Wikipedia lists the genre, it used to call it a propaganda picture before some good samaritan changed it to “historical drama”) about the friendship between preacher George Whitefield and Benjamin Franklin, and the subsequent Great Awakening movement that arose during America’s infancy. It netted 2 points for its $2 million and an extra 5 points for its presence in the domestic Top 10. I will not be seeing this.
We are working on displaying the Leaderboard on this page, but now, you can find it here.
For the most up-to-date scoring on each movie (along with release dates and criteria), check out this spreadsheet. Opening this Wednesday is Mermaid, and on Friday we’ll welcome a host of potential dark horses, including romantic comedy You, Me & Tuscany, subversive horror film Faces of Death, and Steven Soderbergh’s latest, The Christophers. Maybe we’ll finally start to see some proper scoring diversity!
Please let us know if you have any feedback, and don’t forget to come back here next week for a recap of that potentially game-changing week, along with the updated leaderboard!
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