Hey all! Well, with the news of the major markets New York and Los Angeles finally opening their doors to moviegoers we really hoped to make the SMP happen this year… but thanks to Box Office Mojo joining forces with IMDbPro our website’s automated box office calculations are no longer functional. Grrrrr. And without those weekly figures our site cannot process movie rankings for our Standings. At least, not at the moment. We have a crack team looking into this… but based on where things stand today we unfortunately just won’t be able to properly run the SMP in 2021. And that’s a real shame as interest among participants was growing in recent weeks, even with the expectation that streaming was going to cut into the box office grosses. Just look at this week’s release of Godzilla vs. Kong, as even with it now available on HBOMax it’s still projected to do $22M over the weekend for a domestic total of $35M in 5 days. And that’s after an international gross of $123M last weekend. AMC theaters in LA are reporting sold out showings (largely due to their limited capacity rules), and I’m seeing the same here at my local AMC. Many folks are itching to go back to seeing movies at the theater, and distributors are doing their part to make the experience as safe as possible.
Since our last post we have seen Disney (again!) bump Black Widow back a couple months to July 9 AND announce day-and-date (Premium) streaming on Disney+. Same for Cruella on 5/28. Free Guy also jumped back a couple months to 8/13. But you know what? They’re all still summer movies just waiting to be watched on the big screen. Minions 2, however, did bail on summer 2021 completely and is now planned for 2022. The 2021 summer schedule is admittedly a bit thin, but there are still expected hits in A Quiet Place Part II, F9: The Fast Saga, Top Gun: Maverick and Jungle Cruise. I know I’ll be seeing all of them 🙂
While we won’t be able to submit picks this summer, and we won’t be tracking full automated standings on the site, we still plan to provide weekly updates on the Home Page just as we used to. I’m personally looking forward to getting back into the swing of things here, so stay tuned for the first posting of box office projections in early May. See you soon!
– SB
