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Welcome to Week 24 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 contained a few surprises, least of all the dethroning of Spider-Man: Brand New Day to the #2 spot! Don’t shed too many tears – it may not be #1 anymore, but it still passed Star Wars: The Force Awakens to become the highest-grossing (domestically) film of all time. That’s gotta count for something, right?! The Odyssey is even closer behind it now, trailing it by less than $1 million this weekend. Will it be able to reclaim the #2 spot? Elsewhere, Buddy climbed up one spot and the remainders of the summer season continued to fall, including dismal drops from By Any Means, Fall 2: Deadpoint, and The End of Oak Street.
The only eligible new release this weekend is Practical Magic 2, the sequel to the late ’90s cult hit that was not only a vehicle for Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, but also a treatise on the natural perils of love and intimate connection. The sequel might find a second life with its at-home audience, but it is not proving to be a major theatrical hit; it debuted at #1 (the first to solidly knock Spider-Man off its high webbed horse) with $30 million, a respectable number for most movies that aren’t high-budget studio nostalgia gambles. The film itself is disappointing, and that certainly won’t help in its word-of-mouth potential. Still, it has its audience, and we will have to see if they keep showing up in subsequent weeks.
Other new releases this week include action movie Runner, which debuted at #4; historical revolution epic The Uprising at #8; controversial South Korean sci-fi thriller Hope at #9; Oasis concert doc Don’t Look Back in Anger at #11; and heist drama The Fix at #16.
Fall 2: Deadpoint only managed to snag an extra 20 points this week, and all of those came from Metacritic. While not as dismal a showing as last week’s Dog Stars total, it’s not great for the sequel, which didn’t even manage to crack the Top Ten either weekend. 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, horror auteur Zach Cregger makes a dangerous delve into the complicated world of video game adaptations with his take on Resident Evil, which is currently tracking for an $80 million+ opening weekend – great news for those who picked it in the draft!
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