Welcome to Week 9 of the Knock on Wood Movie Fantasy League dispatch. Every week (more or less), we’ll bring 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 weekend marked another dramatic shift in the expectations and dynamics of the domestic box office, in which the expensive blockbuster (The Mandalorian and Grogu) dropped over 70 percent, down to #3, in favor of the two smaller, much more modestly-sized horror movies that are bringing in a massive audience composed mostly of the younger generations. Backrooms over-delivered on expectations and debuted at #1 (more on that soon), while Obsession made history by not only staying in its #2 spot, but making even more than it did last week – this makes it the first non-Christmas release to grow in both its second and third weekends since 1982, when Steven Spielberg released a little ditty called E.T. the Extra Terrestrial. This is unheard of for most major blockbusters, but is especially historic when you consider it’s an independent horror film produced for under $1 million. Hell, it even added 126 theaters, the only widely-released film to do so this week. It’s extremely exciting, especially for those who picked it for their draft! Who knows, it might be the tipping point that could eventually make or break a winner…
Elsewhere on the charts, Michael, The Devil Wears Prada 2, and The Sheep Detectives continued to hit, but with rapidly fading theatrical space and increasingly negative percentage points. Project Hail Mary, now in its eleventh week, finally dropped out of the Top 10, ending another historic, incredibly successful run, though I expect it will continue to stick around in the lower areas of the box office for quite a while. Finally, Tuner, which added 448 theaters this week for a total of 452, had by far the biggest multiplier of the week with 1553.3 percent.
Backrooms swept onto the scene with far more gusto than anticipated, opening to a robust $81 million, shattering expectations and once again proving that interested young people are the future of cinemagoing. The film, based on the YouTube found footage series of the same name, is directed by internet auteur Kane Parsons who, at 20 years old, is the youngest ever director of a studio picture and the youngest filmmaker to open a film at #1 in the box office. I think it will see a lot of repeat business, too – much like the liminal spaces it absorbs its characters into, Backrooms sticks in your head, hypnotically drawing you in and crafting a thoroughly engaging, unhurried experience on an impressive technical and narratively complex level. It smashed the record for A24’s opening weekend, and in just five days, has become the indie studio’s highest-grossing film domestically.
Also new in theaters this weekend is The Breadwinner, a Nate Bargatze comedy that feels reminiscent of schlocky ’80s laugh-fests like Mr. Mom (though Bargatze’s film sorely lacks the originality and good laughs that made those films successful) and – in a limited capacity until next week – Power Ballad, John Carney’s music dramedy that stars Paul Rudd as a wedding singer and Nick Jonas as the boy band star who steals his song. Skip The Breadwinner, see Power Ballad twice.
Not picked but still eligible is Anthony Maras’s D-Day drama Pressure, which features Brendan Fraser as Dwight D. Eisenhower and Andrew Scott as James Stagg, the meteorologist brought in to advise on the forecast for the imminent invasion. It’s a little tough to take this trailer seriously – much of the dramatic tension seems predicated on the question of whether or not D-Day will happen, which, spoiler alert, it does – especially with Fraser and Scott yelling at each other using weather terminology, but there’s nothing wrong with that if it’s what you want to see. This seems to be the big release for the “history-obsessed dad” demographic, and it seems to have hit its target audience, seeing as it opened #7 on 1,829 screens.
Tuner gained 90 critical points this week, providing a massive addition to a film destined to remain with low box office numbers (by merit of its release strategy and general appeal). For what it’s worth, the film is excellent, much more of an old-fashioned crime thriller than most wide-release films we get these days. Unfortunately, the big loser this week is Corporate Retreat, which held strong at zero points due to a failure to reach any threshold for a critical boost.
Check out our leaderboard here. We now have 15 players over the thousand-point threshold, with our leader and runner-up at over 1700 points. For the most up-to-date scoring on each movie, check out this spreadsheet. Additionally, I’ve made a Letterboxd list of every film chosen by our players for the Fantasy League. You can view that anytime here.
Next week, the Wayans brothers reclaim their legacy with the sixth Scary Movie film, which is set to lampoon the last 10+ years of pop culture, and Laika director Travis Knight fights his way back onto the big screen with his second live-action feature, the ambitious Masters of the Universe. After many weekends of surprising and exciting reversals of fortune and paradigm shifts, it will be fascinating to see if the more traditional fantasy blockbuster or the horror/comedy legacy sequel spoof will be able to take the top spot, or if Backrooms and Obsession will continue their dominant streak.
As a reminder, submissions for the MFL are now closed. Thank you all for playing, and I am very much looking forward to seeing the board change every which way over the next few months! Please let us know if you have any feedback, and don’t forget to come back here next week for a recap and the updated leaderboard!
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