Pool Rules

Official Rules of the 2024 Summer Movie Pool:

  • The pool officially runs from May 1 to Aug 31.
  • The 2024 entry deadline is Wednesday May 1 at 11:59pm PT.
  • The Entry Fee is $10.00 and due by Friday May 3.
  • To play you must be registered on this website as a User.
  • If you wish to participate in the pool, email us at summermoviepool@gmail.com to request entry. A Registration link will be sent via email ASAP.
  • Entries will be submitted on the website’s Make Picks page.
  • Participants will submit their Top 10 list of movies in the specific order they will finish.
  • The only eligible movies are those that are released domestically within the listed date range.
  • The final box office earnings for May 1-Aug 31 will be tallied on Sept 1, which is when the SMP winner will be determined.
  • The player with the highest # of correct Top 10 picks wins.
  • In the event of a tie the Deviation Score will be calculated among all contenders’ picks.
  • There will always be a 1st Place + 2nd Place + Bonehead Award prize. The availability of a 3rd Place prize will be subject to the total # of entries.


Prior year players had their User Profile accounts automatically created, and direct emails with the link to the Registration page were sent.

At the time of Picks deadline, new User registrations will lock down so that the data can be compiled for the first opening weekend. All selections will remain confidential until ready to publish.

Be aware that sometimes studio release dates change, even after the summer begins, so do your best homework. Because the start of the pool is May, any movie that comes out in April will not be allowed as a valid choice. April movies are simply not eligible in an event called the SUMMER Movie Pool.

As tiebreaker clarification, the Deviation Score is a tally of the differences between the predicted rank and the actual rank of each of your movies. The better the prediction, the lower the score. A perfect score would be 0. For example, if you picked Movie A to be #2 and it actually finished #1, you would have a deviation score of 1 for that movie (good job). But if you picked Movie B to be #6, and it actually finished #18, that’s a score of 12 (that’s not good). If you are involved in a tiebreaker at the end of the summer the scores of all 10 of your movies will be added up, and the lowest score among all players involved wins.

And as always, we award a prize for the Bonehead Award. Whoever picks the WORST (least successful) movie gets a designated prize from the pool. The criteria for the Bonehead Award is that the movie must be released in the summer timeframe AND it must earn at least a reported $1.00 at the domestic box office. A movie that is expected to come out in June but is pushed back to October (or even worse… goes straight to streaming) doesn’t count if it doesn’t report any $$$. So if you take a risk in your picks and fail miserably you might still pick up the Bonehead Award, which in its own way is an accomplishment… and you will be forever immortalized in the Hall of Boneheads. Note that if there is a tie for this award the prize will be split.

Payment instructions were sent to prior pool players via email. All entry fees will be collected by the Pool Administrators and are due by the entry deadline. Any entries that do not have accompanying payments will be deleted. A portion of the prize pot will go toward site maintenance (fees for website domain + hosting). The prize payouts will be revealed to all once the pool is locked and the total entry count is finalized.

Please feel free to email us at summermoviepool@gmail.com if you have any questions, including payment instructions.