Welcome to Week 23 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!
We will be using the regular three-day weekend for the domestic box office, but the Labor Day holiday extended the box office potential of at least a few releases. The Odyssey was briefly back at #1, but Spider-Man: Brand New Day triumphed in the end, placing it on the verge of passing Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ all-time domestic record. It only needs $12 million to snatch that crown. Elsewhere, Buddy is the only film in the Top Ten with a positive multiplier (6.2%) with 494 additional screens, and the old mainstays fell one slot down…except for The Dog Stars, which halved its placing from last week with a devastating drop from #5 to #10.
The banner release this week is Fall 2: Deadpoint, the (barely connected) sequel to the 2022 thriller hit. Deadpoint fell in with a little over $3 million this weekend, and couldn’t even crack the Top Ten. Perhaps the mid-week release date was a miscalculation, but I think a lot of it comes down to the strength of the summer overall. There’s less room for smaller movies – sometimes, like Obsession, they explode in popularity, but that was far more likely at the start of the season – and it seems that the Fall audience from four years ago is not that interested in showing up.
Also out this week is Onslaught, a sci-fi thriller from The Guest director Adam Wingard, and By Any Means, a “true story” about an FBI agent teaming up with a mobster to investigate the murder of a civil rights leader. Two re-releases also hit theaters – the seminal anime film Akira (in a new 4K restoration), and the 20th anniversary reissue of the Pixar film Cars. The latter is an especially big deal for me, seeing as it was the first film I saw in theaters, way back in 2006; I am not just celebrating 20 years of Cars, but also 20 years of theatergoing.
Coyote vs. Acme’s underdog narrative served it well, both at the box office (with a strong grip on #3) and critically, where it ran away with 105 bonus points for those who drafted it. The Dog Stars, on the other hand, came away with 1/7 of that total at 15 critical points. For more, 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 sisters (and the next generation of Owens women) return in Practical Magic 2, another legacy sequel that makes me wonder if “long-awaited” is the right term, or just one that we’re obligated to use because it comes almost 30 years after the original. Either way, we shall see if it performs well very soon!
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