Welcome to Week 13 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’s domestic box office is down from last weekend about 30%, with Toy Story remaining in its top spot (though sustaining a 55% drop) and Obsession impressively clinging to #3 in its seventh weekend. If you, for whatever reason, needed any more proof that the indie horror flick is a bona fide phenomenon, there it is! It won’t surpass the highest-grossing film to not reach #1 (that spot will belong to Oppenheimer for quite a long time), but it’s still an incredibly admirable position to have reached, and will most likely become the third highest-grossing film to hold that title if it surpasses My Big Fat Greek Wedding’s $241 million. It’s already the highest-grossing live-action original movie of the year! Elsewhere on the box office, Disclosure Day, Backrooms, and Scary Movie continue their significant drops, making way for the Minions and Moana to knock them out for good in the coming weeks.
This week’s highest-profile new release is Supergirl, the second film in James Gunn’s ambitious new DC cinematic experiment. It landed far below expectations, grossing about $37 million in its opening weekend, though that still ensured it the #2 spot, though it was almost $100 million below its predecessor (Superman)’s opening last summer. Though this by no means rings the death knell for Gunn’s DCU, hopefully it will provide a wakeup call in allowing more individualistic styles to be explored rather than more films aping Gunn’s trademark visual and sonorous fashion. Milly Alcock gives a tremendous performance as the titular Supergirl, and if anything, I’m very glad that the central performance is one that feels well-suited to the world – after all, we’ll be seeing much of her in the future of this DCU, specifically in next year’s Man of Tomorrow. When a female-led superhero movie releases, it’s important to take into account that they are frequently received with a disproportionate degree of misogyny, and the low critical scores is not the only factor that should be taken into account (Captain Marvel made over $1 billion). It doesn’t help that Supergirl feels unfocused, but I, for one, am thrilled that Gunn is pushing female-led stories in this universe, and hope that Supergirl’s underperformance does not deter such moves in the future.
Also in theaters this week is Jackass: Best and Last, the self-purported final installment of the greatest “dudes rock” docu-franchise of all time. Full disclosure, it has never quite been my cup of tea, but I’m happy that it satisfies those who do enjoy the antics of Johnny Knoxville and the gang. It swooped in with an $8.5 million dick punch, by far the lowest of the entire series so far, but it still managed to grab the #4 spot. Olivia Wilde’s The Invite is also playing in limited theaters – because of its small scope, it barely broke the Top 20, but once it expands beyond seven theaters, it’s bound to broaden its range. It’s not the most commercial of comedies, but it is, by far, the best new release of the weekend, and perhaps of the entire month so far. It expands widely this coming Friday!
Critical scores covered a wide range this week; Toy Story 5 nabbed the record for second-most bonus points with 105 (only behind Obsession’s 150), while Girls Like Girls came away with 65 and The Death of Robin scraped by with 25. The more niche the appeal, the less audiences and critics seemed to respond. Though honestly, who couldn’t have predicted that Toy Story would be a major hit in every arena?
Check out our leaderboard here. 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 Despicable Me franchise throws it back to Babylon-era Hollywood for a creature caper with Minions & Monsters, one of the best-reviewed entries in the entire series thus far (including holding the highest-ever Rotten Tomatoes score for an Illumination film). Though I was too young during the heyday of blockbuster midnight screenings, I will be seated to see my favorite yellow friends wreak havoc at the 12:01 a.m. showtime tonight alongside many children up way past their bedtimes (who is this midnight showing really for?). Additionally, Angel Studios tries its hand again at four-quadrant appeal with Young Washington, the focused biopic that promises to tell “the true story” behind the nation’s premier Founding Father. I’ll most likely skip that one; celebrating America isn’t a top priority right now.
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!
Leave a Reply