Smile Because It Happened

This is the latest edition of the Movies Fantasy League newsletter. The drafting window for this season has closed, but you can still sign up to get the newsletter, which provides a weekly recap of box-office performance, awards nominations, and critical chatter on all the buzziest movies.

This week in the MFL, a mid-tier horror movie could be proving its worth as a $5 buy; both The Wild Robot and Anora are giving positive signals at the box office, even if they aren’t translating into points (… yet, in the case of Anora); and Vulture film critic Alison Willmore breaks down her roster.

A Journey of a Thousand Smiles Begins With a Single Sequel

Terrifier 3’s moment at the top of the U.S. box-office was a short-lived affair, as the clown-based horror flick dropped to third place in its second weekend. Instead, a different horror flick drew spooky-season audiences out to the movies, as Smile 2 took in $23 million in its debut week and topped the charts. It’s an almost-identical first-weekend haul to that of the first Smile in 2022, a film that went on to make a robust $105 million in the U.S. alone.

The Wild Robot continues to prove itself to be incredibly resilient, pulling in another $10 million over the weekend to cross the $100 million threshold. The Wild Robot opened the week before scoring started, so it’s not box-office eligible, but this is still pertinent to anyone who drafted that movie. Its main competition for animation awards is Inside Out 2, a movie that got credit (along with Deadpool & Wolverine) for rescuing the summer box office, so the more The Wild Robot can also become a financial success story, the more it can neutralize Pixar’s advantage.

Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh’s romantic weepie We Live in Time expanded into almost a thousand theaters this weekend and landed in fifth place with a $4 million yield. That’s a far cry from the year’s standard-bearing romantic drama, It Ends With Us. It’s funny that Pugh’s movie has to live in the shadow of this year’s Don’t Worry Darling.

One of the biggest box-office stories of the weekend won’t show up on the MFL scoreboard this week: On just six screens, Anora pulled in $550,000, for a per-screen average of $90,000. That’s the second-highest per-screen average of the post-pandemic era (after Asteroid City). This is very good news for Anora drafters (that’s, uh, most of you) provided the movie can maintain even some of that enthusiasm as it expands out. Next week, Neon will place the Palme d’Or winner in a handful of other cities, with a wide expansion expected in November.

Other MFL notable tallies:

➼ The Pharrell Williams documentary-in-LEGO Piece by Piece picked up another $2 million over the weekend, pushing its total to $7 million. That’s good for a documentary, but bad for a LEGO movie.

➼ Saturday Night continued to bomb, crawling over the $7 million threshold. That’s good for a movie involving Milton Berle in 2024, but bad for a movie featuring Lorne Michaels in SNL’s 50th-anniversary season.

➼ The Apprentice, a movie nobody wanted, has now made over $3 million, and I submit that you could have made the same amount of money with a movie about the Joan Rivers–versus–Annie Duke fight on The Apprentice that one season.

➼ Finally, the Kate Winslet war-photographer movie, Lee, which suckered a bunch of people into wasting $8 last season after playing the Toronto Film Festival and then never actually opened, has crossed the $1 million threshold and finally turned a Movies Fantasy League profit.

So You’ve Fallen Behind Because You Didn’t Draft For Box Office

One of the fun things about Smile 2 opening with pretty much the same total as the first Smile is that I can confidently project how the rest of its run will turn out— and thus use it as an example of why the folks who drafted movies for pure box-office potential may have made a smart move.

Something I’ve often encountered when talking to people about their teams is an incredulousness about selecting movies that have zero awards potential but should do well at the box office. There are, of course, movies that are lined up to be blockbusters, among them Moana 2, Gladiator II, Wicked, and Mufasa, all of which went for at least $20 a pop. But Smile 2, a likely $100 million movie, cost you only $5. With $23 million at the box office and a No. 1 spot, Smile 2 pulled in 43 points for its drafters. If it performs on the level of its predecessor’s $105 million domestic take, here how those points would break down:

$105 million = 105 points
Two weeks at No. 1 = 40 points
Passing the $25 million threshold = ten points
Passing the $50 million threshold = 15 points
Passing the $75 million threshold = 15 points
Passing the $100 million threshold = 20 points
TOTAL: 205 points

If you took that same $5 and drafted, say, His Three Daughters or Will & Harper (Netflix movies with zero box-office benefit), that puts you in a 200-point hole compared to your Smile-ing competitors. The question then becomes: How well does a movie have to perform during awards season to make up for that shortfall?

Let’s take a look at a few $5 examples:

The Substance cost you $5 because there’s a chance that Demi Moore goes on an awards-season run of Best Actress nominations. An optimistic scenario like that would see Demi pick up a major critics prize or two and then show up on the nominee lists for the Critics Choice, the Golden Globes, SAG, BAFTA, and the Oscars (and since the circumstances are right, she could also get nominated by the Gothams, Indie Spirits, and AARP Movies for Grownups Awards). Here’s that point breakdown:

Gothams nomination: 15 points
Indie Spirits nomination: 15 points
Two major critics prizes: 20 points
Golden Globe nomination: 15 points
Critics Choice nomination: 15 points
SAG nomination: 20 points
BAFTA nomination: 20 points
AARP Movies for Grownups nomination: 5 points
Oscar nomination: 25 points
TOTAL: 150 points

If Demi were to win any of those prizes (a long shot, but not impossible), that total would go up. And if The Substance is also able to parlay Demi’s success into nominations for its makeup/hairstyling (possible!), visual effects, or sound design (less likely!), that would be even more points.

How about something like Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes? There’s precedent for the Academy nominating these movies in craft categories like sound, visual effects, and hair/makeup. Here’s a best-case scenario point breakdown:

Critics Choice nomination (makeup/hair): five points
Critics Choice nomination (VFX): five points
Oscars shortlist (makeup/hair): five points
Oscars shortlist (sound): five points
Oscars shortlist (VFX): five points
SAG nomination (stunt ensemble): five points
BAFTA nomination (makeup/hair): ten points
BAFTA nomination (sound): ten points
BAFTA nomination (VFX): ten points
Oscar nomination (makeup/hair): 15 points
Oscar nomination (sound): 15 points
Oscar nomination (VFX): 15 points
TOTAL: 105 points

A win in any of those categories would add to those totals, though it’s worth noting that the last time a movie that wasn’t nominated for Best Picture won a Sound Oscar, it was 2012’s Skyfall. And the last non–Best Picture nominee to win the Oscar for Visual Effects by defeating Best Picture nominees in the category was 2015’s Ex Machina.

The point is: A lot would have to go right for a movie with awards potential limited to only one or two categories to compete with a $100 million box-office success.

Still, look at another $5 buy: The Seed of the Sacred Fig, the well-reviewed Cannes premiere that is Germany’s entry into the International Feature race. There are only a handful of precursors that give out awards for International Features, but let’s say, for the sake of argument, Seed runs the table and not only gets nominated but wins these awards:

Gothams nomination + win: 25 points
Indie Spirits nomination + win: 15 points
New York Film Critics Circle win: ten points
Los Angeles Film Critics Association win: ten points
Golden Globe nomination + win: 40 points
Critics Choice nomination + win: 15 points
National Board of Review win: ten points
BAFTA nomination + win: 30 points
Oscars shortlist + nomination + win: 105 points
TOTAL: 260 points

Obviously, that would be everything going right for Seed of the Sacred Fig in those International Feature races. Beyond that, recent years have shown non-English-language films to be competitive in other categories, picking up nominations for acting, writing, directing, and even Best Picture. While it would take clever campaigning and for American arthouse audiences to latch onto the movie, it’s not unheard of.

So if you’re currently watching other teams shoot past you on the wings of creepy rictus grins, know that this level of success is what you’ve gotta be rooting for out of your lower-budget buys. A $100 million horror movie with zero awards potential is worth one and a half Monstro Elisasues, two highly evolved, intelligent apes, and, like, 80 percent of a sacred fig.

Tales From the Drafting Table

This week, Vulture film critic Alison Willmore gives us a peek behind the curtain of her 8-film roster.

Alison’s picks:
- Anora
- Nickel Boys
- The Brutalist
- Challengers
- A Complete Unknown
- The Room Next Door
- The Fire Inside
- Kneecap

My strategy is that I have no strategy. I rarely do! My awards-season guesses have always only ever been based on gut feelings I get after having ingested enough Oscar coverage to develop a sense of the narratives that are forming. And this year, there really aren’t any narratives yet? I went for Nickel Boys and Anora because I like both a lot and expect they will get a lot of love in terms of critics groups and indie prizes, regardless of how much they win over the Academy. I bought The Brutalist because it’s a big ol’ sweeping attempt at a Great American Movie that, if everything goes right for it, could dominate the season.

The Room Next Door and A Complete Unknown seem like good acting category bets, and I do feel like Challengers has enough of a culture footprint that I can see it reemerging into the conversation if other titles aren’t getting enough traction. The Fire Inside got good word of mouth out of TIFF and has a screenplay by Barry Jenkins, and while I didn’t like Kneecap at all, it was cheap and other people weirdly love it. Also, I always forget there’s a box-office component to this game and so I never factor it into my picks, alas.

Leaderboard

Coming This Week

Venom: The Last Dance is the latest film to go the all-box-office, no-awards route, while Conclave will open wide and hope the appetite for Vatican intrigue and Ralph Fiennes is strong enough to attract some ticket buyers.

Questions? Feedback? Can’t find your team or mini-league on the leaderboard? Drop us a line at moviesleague@vulture.com.