2016 Summer Movie Wager: A Game Of Box Office Predictions

Update: During this podcast, we put the call out to listeners/readers to create a system that would act as a running scoreboard, dynamically updating with the box office numbers to show who is in the lead throughout the Summer. A /Filmcast listener named Paul answered the call, and you can now check the running tally on the Summer Movie Wager Virtual Scoreboard. We didn't actually expect anyone to create anything as intricate as this, so a big thanks goes out to Paul. Please also check out his cocktail blog here.

Its that time of year again — the Summer movie season is upon us. And the /Filmcast team have once again gathered to compete in what has become an annual tradition: the Summer Movie Wager. Every year in the past I would make a guest appearance on the Totally Rad Show for this segment, but with that show now disbanded we have taken on the job of hosting this contest on /Film. This is the tenth annual edition of this contest.

Last year was David Chen's first time participating and he won the wager. This year the contest includes Devindra Hardawar (his first time), David Chen, Germain Lussier, Jeff Cannata and myself in a game is to decide what will be the highest grossing films of the Summer. It's a free-for-all; the person with the best score wins. But it isn't just that easy — not only do the participants need to predict what 10 films will be the highest grossing films domestically, but we need to place them in order. After the jump you can listen to the full episode of the show with our predictions.

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The rules for the game come from TimeTravelReview's Summer Movie Pool:

The object is to pick the films that you think will be the top-ten grossing films of the summer, in order of box-office performance. As I've said, that means only films released from May 1st 2016 to the Labor Day weekend, counting only the money those films make domestically (US and Canada) in that period. In other words films from March or April might still be making money after May 1st, but they don't count; films released from May on could start racking up foreign B.O., but that doesn't count; films released from May on could still be making money into September, but that doesn't count either. Box Office numbers are generally available late Monday or Tuesday after the weekend closes. For the last seven or so years, I have been using box office numbers from Yahoo Box Office which gets their numbers in turn from Box Office Mojo. So what you will be doing is figuring out what 10 films will make the most money, and putting them in order of what you think they will gross at the box office. BUT, in addition to your top 10, you get to pick 3 "Dark Horses"- films you think *might* make it, but that you are not confident enough about to put into the top 10 proper.

The rest of the scoring goes like this:

The scoring is tabulated so that you get the SINGLE HIGHEST point value for each pick- that is, if you get number ten right, you don't get 13+3, you only get 13.

Wildcards

Wildcards

Wildcards

Wildcards

Feel free to make your own predictions in the comments below!