Who’s ready for Year XXI of the most awesome annual Summer Movie Pool everrrrrrrrrrr?!?! New banner… check (another great one from Chapman). Cleaned up site pages… check. New list of 2018 summer movies entered… check. Game on!!!
2017 RECAP
2016 saw a 3% increase from 2015 with a total $4.3B, but 2017 sure gave it all back with $3.7B – the worst summer in 11 years. While we had our monster hits in May (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 – $389M), June (Wonder Woman – $407M), and July (Spider-Man: Homecoming – $320M), where was August?? Not a single marquee film in a month that was led by $81M for Annabelle: Creation. Yeahhhh that’s no good.
WW came as a bit of a surprise finishing #1, as it’s average placement was 4.6. GOTG2 only missed #1 by $20M, nearly matching it’s own avg place rating of 1.1. And Spidey’s #3 finish was spot on it’s avg place rating of 3.6. Even Despicable Me 3 finishing #4 closely matched it’s avg place rating of 3.3. Collectively we weren’t too far off for each of the remaining Top 10 films… but where in the heck did Girls Trip come from? I looked back at my initial research and I had it at $44M. NO ONE saw this coming. To think that just $110M would have made Top 10 for any other film this summer. I’m looking at you, The Mummy 🙁 19 movies so far this year have earned at least $110M, but only 9 during the summer.
Geez, are we looking at only 8 in 2018? This summer we had 12 sequels/reboots with only 3 exceeding their previous installment. 2016 had 14 and 4. You’d think at some point Hollywood would wake up.
For the SMP, once again 8 was the magic number, and we had 15 players hit that mark. Big tiebreaker! And for the EIGHTH straight year we’ve had someone new win the top prize. Congrats to xfactor (Mike McPherson) for becoming our 15th different person to win in our 20 total years. Things got a little hairy there at the end with the final shuffling, but Mike was able to keep the second-placers at arm’s length to win in just his 3rd year of playing. Nice work!
Mike wins the 1st Place prize of $500 – our biggest payout yet!. Brandon and Kevin tied for 2nd Place, so they split the 2nd + 3rd prize money for $80 each. Great work in your very first SMPs! Just emember, EVERYONE has a shot at winning this thing.
And we can’t forget our beloved Bonehead Award. Amityville: The Awakening did not make any $$$, so it did not qualify for the Bonehead. That leaves us with The Wall ($1.8M) which happened to be selected by not one or two, but THREE players. Ok we’ve never had a three-way tie for the Bonehead. This just keeps getting better! Our “winners” Ted Venable, Justin Kane, and Lindsay Pate all get to share the $10 prize. Congrats! lol
Here are our previous winners:
2017 – Mike McPherson
2016 – Curt Perone
2015 – Mario Nelson
2014 – Mark Adolphus
2013 – Ally Mauro
2012 – Sponge
2011 – Kelly Peterson
2010 – Kurt Weierstall
2009 – Steve Berg
2008 – Justin Klein
2007 – Tim Driscoll
2006 – Steve Berg
2005 – Larry Pennington
2004 – Chic Meyers
2003 – Todd Fiore / Dave Logan / Jaime McGauley (tie)
2002 – Steve Berg
2001 – Steve Berg
2000 – Mike Chapman
1999 – Steve Berg
1998 – Steve Berg
The cutoff for entries is the first Friday of May, so the time to confirm entries and track payments will be limited. As such, the deadline for submitting your picks will be the first Thursday of May at 11:59pm PST. At that point the site will lock and no further entries will be accepted. The entire month of April is more than enough time to assemble your picks and submit them.
Have your picks submitted by May 3!!!
On May 4 all picks will be revealed on the Current Standings page. Enjoy… and good luck!!
– SB