Welcome to Week 15 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 crowned a new champion, but largely stuck to the trends of previous weeks. Minions & Monsters, Toy Story 5, Young Washington, Supergirl, Disclosure Day and Backrooms fell in the range from 30-65%, and Obsession only continued its impressive run (dropping a mere 26% in its ninth weekend), passing Sinners to become both the highest-grossing original movie and the highest-grossing original live-action movie of the century. It’s just another feather in the cap of the film now available on VOD, physical media, and (as of Friday) streaming. We’ll see how it affects its numbers going forward! Additionally, Toy Story became the biggest scorer in the Fantasy League after this weekend’s tally, passing The Super Mario Galaxy Movie – though the Pixar film has not passed Mario financially, at least not yet, its critical scores pushed it over the edge – and will likely only keep increasing its total.
The king (or daughter of the chief) of the box office is Moana, the latest live-action remake of a Disney animated film that once again asks the question “What if the fantastic movie you love looked like a car commercial and featured stale performances and no improvements to the source material whatsoever?” At least Moana employed an indigenous cast and crew, but it’s largely a lifeless experience, and bafflingly out only ten years after the original – not nearly long enough to stoke the necessary nostalgia. The audience seems to agree; Moana made $43 million domestically, a number that movies like Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass would kill for, but isn’t quite up to snuff for these Disney remakes which are getting more and more expensive. It might be a moderate family hit, because the bones are good…but that’s because the bones are cribbed from a movie that is not ashamed to utilize the medium it’s meant for! Two hours of deep uncanniness, and for what?
Also out this week is Evil Dead Burn, the sixth entry in the long-running franchise, and the third in the “reboot era,” where each film is written and directed by an up-and-coming genre voice. Burn comes to us courtesy of French filmmaker Sébastien Vaniček, and while yes, it is a hyper-violent, incredibly scary horror movie, it’s also extremely fun, a quality that should not be undervalued or discounted when it comes to audience reaction. However, it’s also important to remember that the Evil Dead movies are traditionally more cult hits (2023’s Rise notwithstanding), and with an already crowded summer slate still ahead, Burn’s prospects aren’t looking great. It blazed onto the scene with $13.7 million, which snagged it the #4 spot, but with a season that has supported horror (both original and IP-based), there is always hope it will endure for weeks on end.
The final new release of the weekend is Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, a surreal comedy from David Wain (director of Wet Hot American Summer) that is sneakily the best release of the three. Its release was more limited than its weekend siblings, screening in 1000 theaters nationwide, but it will cross the $1 million threshold over the course of this week. This is my biggest recommendation this week…if it’s playing near you, seek it out! It’s worth it. The less said about it, the better.
Elsewhere, both Minions and Young Washington gained similar traction when critical scores were taken into account – a damn shame, considering just how great Minions is, especially compared to the rest of the Despicable Me franchise!
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 wait is finally over…Christopher Nolan’s epic adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey is finally about to hit cinemas. No matter what format you’re seeing it in – IMAX, 70mm, Dolby, Prime, Laser, or any of the myriad ways you can watch a movie in a theater these days – you’re in for a hell of a ride.
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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