2013 Super Contest - Pick the Top 20 Films

[jas8382]

Here we go.

1. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
2. Iron Man 3
3. Star Trek Into Darkness
4. Monsters University
5. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
6. Fast and Furious 6
7. Oz: The Great and Powerful
8. Man of Steel
9. The Hangover Part III
10. Frozen
11. The Wolverine
12. The Croods
13. Pacific Rim
14. Thor: The Dark World
15. Anchorman: The Legend Continues
16. The Lone Ranger
17. Despicable Me 2
18. Jack Ryan
19. The Heat
20. Ender’s Game

Bench
1. World War Z
2. Turbo

[numbersix]

Thanks Jas (and good call on The Heat, I was seriously considering it).

Everyone else has 10 days left to send in their picks.

[JohnErle]

Mr. Peabody & Sherman just got bumped to March 2014, so this game hasn't even started yet and Shryke has already lost one of his bench picks. How many picks will he manage to lose this year?

Despite my normally cutthroat competitive nature, I actually feel sorry for the guy. Are we allowing replacements before the deadline this year?

[Buscemi]

Bad news for me but I do like Walking with Dinosaurs' chances. Kids love dinosaurs and it's based on a popular miniseries. I could see it and Saving Mr. Banks (which I believe to be this year's Lincoln) dominating Christmas (or at least serve as strong alternatives to The Hobbit).

[numbersix]

Unless there's new kiddie fare to be announced, Walking with Dinos could indeed do well.

Not so sure about Saving Mr Banks. Feels like it's trying to hard to be Oscar bait and may turn out to be a mid level hit at best. The film it reminds me most of at the moment is Finding Neverland.

[numbersix]

They way we normally play it, once you post your list that's it. Can't make any changes, even if it's well before the deadline. Hence the bench system. I guess that's why it's good to wait a bit (as we saw with Jack the Giant Killer).

But you never know what film will be pushed next. My money's on White House Down (if Olympus has Fallen does well, it'll be to not appear as the inferior version, and if it fails, WHD will have to distance itself from it anyway). Given that summer is packed I could see it move.

[Buscemi]

Even with Morgan Freeman as the House Speaker, I don't see Olympus Has Fallen being a hit. Gerard Butler's time as a leading man has long passed and the plot is basically "Under Siege in the White House". Also, FilmDistrict hasn't had a hit since Insidious (Soul Surfer doesn't count since they co-distributed it).

And if any summer movies get pushed, it will be The Internship, Kick-Ass 2 or Pacific Rim. The Internship feels like a marginal fall title (I could see it moving to October and pushing Vaughn's other film, The Delivery Man, to January), the first Kick-Ass hardly made a dent as the box office and Pacific Rim looks like a complete disaster (outside of Man of Steel, Warner Bros. is going to have an awful 2013).

[Chienfantome]

If Olympus has Fallen can manage to do the same numbers as Mirror Mirro last year, it will be successfull enough for a Gerard Butler film, and I can't see White House Down been postponed because Olympuis would have made 65 million dollars. At worst, it would be postponed to the end of the year, not 2014.

[Buscemi]

But what Mirror Mirror lacked in originality, it made up in style but having Tarsem (a visual genius) as director and eschewing darker and edgier for more of a Russian ballet feel. Meanwhile, Olympus Has Fallen has that Millennium Films patented low-rent style. And outside of the two Expendables movies (which took that style and made it an affectionate parody), audiences don't buy into it.

[Chienfantome]

There wasn't much visual genius in Mirror Mirror... What I meant was the Snow White competition last year didn't prevent Hunstman to open in June despite the 65 million dollars of Mirror Mirror, so even if Olympus manages to grab 65 million, which obviously would be fantastic given Butler is the lead, there's no reason White House Down would be postponed.

[Buscemi]

Sure the style of Mirror Mirror isn't new but to me, it was a breath of fresh air for a genre that had needed some lightening up to return to a classic feel. And as Jason Statham said in The Expendables 2, "Nothing wrong with a classic".

[Chienfantome]

It was amusing at best. Which is probably better than I can say of Snow White and the Huntsman, in the end.

[Buscemi]

But anyway, I feel that we will start to enter a long period of box office doldrums that Hollywood probably won't get out of until Thanksgiving. Outside of Die Hard, February looks like a washout, March will vastly underperform, April doesn't look interesting (it wouldn't surprise me to see Jurassic Park 3-D be the big movie of that month), May will be down since there isn't an Avengers, June is hit or miss with some tentpoles and misplaced titles, July will be down due to the lack of a Dark Knight Rises, August will be okay but late August is overcrowded, September looks like September and October should start to pick up. Meanwhile, November will be logjammin' like Karl Hungus but I still see Catching Fire underperforming (the early marketing campaign is very weak by simply reusing the first film's imagery) and Thor 2 stealing a lot of its audience.

[JohnErle]

They way we normally play it, once you post your list that's it. Can't make any changes, even if it's well before the deadline. Hence the bench system. I guess that's why it's good to wait a bit (as we saw with Jack the Giant Killer).

I forgot that the same thing happened last year with Jack. Poor Shryke!

And Buscemi, I know you're upset about losing Mr. Peabody as well, but that's no reason to torture us all with that animated GIF.

[Buscemi]

Obviously, you fail to see the brilliance of Ash Ketchum in a pimp suit.