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Box Office Wizard (8.6.10)

By: | Movie Features | August 6, 2010
Time for your weekly BOW. That doesn't mean bend your knees -- it means try your hand at Box Office Wizard. It's our weekly box office prediction competition. All you're required to do is predict which five movies will place in the top five of this weekend's U.S. domestic box office chart. Simple enough, right? I will make my own predictions here and explain them to you each week to give you some sort of reference point. It's then your job to enter a comment with your top five. 

This is Week #14. The first week you predict is the first week you enter the Box Office Wizard competition. For every correct prediction each week, you earn a point. Points are cumulative. The game keeps going on and on forever and ever except we will reset everyone back to zero -- let's say -- once a year. Each week there will be at least two winners: a weekend wizard for the users who guessed the most correct and a box office wizard for the user with the most points to date. The goal is to be Box Office Wizard for as long as you can. I'll pick an end date for the year at some point and then whoever has the most becomes the year's box office wizard. Maybe by the team that happens, Player Affinity will be so wildly popular that we'll have some cool free stuff to give the Box Office Wizard of the Year. Regardless, it's worth giving a try. What do you have to lose?

Here are last week's results and the winners of the competition for the week as well as the current all-time wizard.

Last Week's Top Five
                      1. 1. Inception $27.4M (weekend)… $193.3M (gross)
                      2. 2. Dinner for Schmucks $23.5M… $23.5M
                      3. 3. Salt $19.4M… $71.0M
                      4. 4. Despicable Me $15.5M… $190.3M
                      5. 5. Charlie St. Cloud $12.3M... $12.3M

                      Week #13 Wizard(s): OracleofGame, TheGamerGeek - 3 pts
                      Current Box Office Wizard: Steven C - 47 Pts 

                      "Cats & Dogs" messed everyone up last week, failing to land in the top five whereas dear old "Charlie" did. Our gamer guys took the weekend as a result, good work!

                      ALL-TIME TOTALS
                      Steven C - 47
                      TheGamerGeek - 41
                      SimonSays - 33
                      Sallas - 25
                      Olly H - 14
                      Dustin C - 10
                      Dementious - 5 
                      OracleofGame - 4
                      Matthew D - 3
                      Lydia - 2


                      Remember, only submissions in the comment section count and they must be made by 12:00 PM SATURDAY. Check our weekly recap posting late afternoon every Monday for the box office figures of the weekend. Remember, we count the WEEKEND ACTUALS, not the ESTIMATES announced on Sundays. On 4-day weekends, only the 3-day total matters.

                      Here are this week's new contenders followed by my predictions.

                      New Contenders this Weekend

                      The Other Guys
                      Directed by Adam McKay
                      Written by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay
                      Starring: Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Eva Mendes, Michael Keaton
                      Genre: Comedy/Action
                      Distributor: Sony/Columbia
                      Release: 3,651 theaters 




                      Step Up 3D
                      Directed by Jon Chu
                      Written by Amy Andelson and Emily Meyer, Duane Adler (characters)
                      Starring: Rick Malambri, Adam G. Sevani, Alyson Stoner
                      Genre: Dance
                      Distributor: Disney (Buena Vista)
                      Release: 2,435 theaters 




                      My Top 5 Predictions

                      Well, I'm glad last week is over. With Inception at the top spot for the third week in a row with only $27 million, the top spot is up for grabs. Given Will Ferrell's track record, The Other Guys should be able to grab it with $25-30 million, possibly more with the good reviews it's gotten (or less if "Schmucks" does well in its second week).

                      Seeing as Step Up 3D will have its core audience and both film have made $18-20 million, I think the same can be expected of this three-quel. 3-D prices should help push it over $20 million by a little bit.

                      That brings us back to Inception, which should still decline at its healthy rate of a third at a time, positioning it for about $18 million. Dinner for Schmucks, even with a new comedy in place threatening to take a chunk out of its take, will find fourth with $10-12 million. Given the also slow rate of decline for Despicable Me, it should jump Salt for fifth place.
                      1. 1. The Other Guys
                      2. 2. Step Up 3D
                      3. 3. Inception
                      4. 4. Dinner for Schmucks
                      5. 5. Despicable Me

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                      Steven Chaitman

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