Fantasy Movie League: Spring Season Suspended


I began this column last week talking about the uncertainty facing the country and what it might mean for the Box Office. How quickly things have changed. Now major movie theaters, like sports, have been closed for the time being as the United States works to fight the spread of the Coronavirus.

Since the Fantasy Movie League is based on Box Office takes, and there is no Box Office, the game has been suspended. This comes in the wake of Regal, Cinemark and AMC, the country’s largest theater chains, all announcing closures. The latter of them, AMC, said it plans closures for six to 12 weeks. In addition, most of the major films set to be released in the second half of March, April and May have been postponed.

This also comes in the wake of a historically low Box Office last weekend, seeing numbers that haven’t appeared since September of 2000. That, of course, had an impact on our competition for Week 1 of the Spring Season. While we don’t have a new slate to consider, and won’t for a while, we can review what we saw last week.

Last week I bet on I Still Believe, the Christian film that seemed like it would still have a built-in audience. And early in the weekend, it looked like that, indeed, would hit the value mark. But slowly the Vin Diesel action film Bloodshot built its Box Office, and as a cheaper option proved to be the Best Value. So a Perfect Cineplex featured Bloodshot across four screens, plus The Invisible Man and three of Fantasy Island. It brought in just over $56 million with bonuses. My option, anchored by four screens of I Still Believe was just shy of $40 million.

So I started in a bit of a hole, but I’ll hope to climb out quickly when the game resumes, possibly just in time to kick off the summer season. Until then, you can catch new films on VOD, including Trolls: World Tour on April 10. And stay safe out there!

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