Welcome to Week 17 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 was down from last week, but let’s be honest, how was The Odyssey’s second weekend expected to compete with its record-breaking first? Even in its second weekend, it outgrossed Oppenheimer’s first from 2023, an impressive feat that put Nolan’s epic on track to easily pass $1 billion and become his highest-grossing film. Further down, Moana, Toy Story 5, and Minions & Monsters continued chugging along, sustaining themselves on the family crowd that needed something else to see other than the R-rated Odyssey. Evil Dead Burn, The Invite, and Young Washington are still kicking around in the Top Ten, with Young Washington suffering the biggest drop with almost 50% down from last week (grossing less than $2 million over the three days). In fact, The Odyssey is the only film in the whole lineup that made over $10 million – it’s ahead of Moana by about $80 million, a wide gap only surpassed by last week’s impressive $106 million disparity! The Top Ten ends with Obsession, which, in its eleventh week, is still clinging to a spot in the coveted ranking. Its grosses this weekend allowed it to pass 2024’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice to become the eighth highest-grossing horror movie of all time worldwide, a statistic far greater than anyone expected from the outset of its release. Even if it drops out of the Top Ten next week, its legacy is secure.
For the very first time, there are no new eligible releases this week! No major studio picture wanted to come within a week of The Odyssey’s record-shattering opening weekend, and after seeing those numbers, it’s safe to say it’s a wholly reasonable avoidance. However, among the smaller (ineligible) releases are the Alan Ritchson action/thriller Motor City (destined for the Redbox rental shelf, if those still exist), Nicolas Winding Refn’s critically panned sci-fi film Her Private Hell, the public-domain indie slasher Pinocchio: Unstrung (which has been getting very good reviews, to everyone’s great surprise), and Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda’s sci-fi drama Sheep in the Box. Also new this week is a theatrical pro-shot of Hadestown: The Musical, filmed over three performances on the West End, which features five of the show’s original Broadway cast members. Hadestown opened at #3 in the domestic box office, ahead of Disney’s live stage recording of Hamilton, and it gave distributor Bleecker Street its biggest opening of all time. It’s the only one of this lineup I have seen, and it’s in theaters until this Wednesday – be sure to catch it if you can!
Additionally, Amazon MGM’s black comedy heist film 4 Kids Walk Into a Bank, previously dated for April 17, was pushed to August this past spring without a firm theatrical date. Because the month of August is approaching in a few short days and we have not even seen a trailer yet, I am making the executive decision to consider it delayed indefinitely and remove it from the Fantasy League. That having been said, if it makes a miraculous comeback and those four kids actually do walk into that bank by the end of September, it will make a triumphant return into the standings. Don’t count on it, though.
The Odyssey smashed the record previously held by Obsession when it came to critical score bonuses, netting 160 extra points across Metacritic, Letterboxd, Rotten Tomatoes, and IMDb. Its most impressive grab was 50 whole points from Metacritic, a number shared by only three other films from this League’s lineup.
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, Tom Holland’s Peter Parker (who is that, again?) swings onscreen for the first time in five years with Spider-Man: Brand New Day, a blockbuster that promises to smash records and undoubtedly hopes to restore audience faith in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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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