The Return of the Movies Fantasy League (original) (raw)

We Are So Back

Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photo: Warner Bros./Everett Collection

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.

You can call the Movies Fantasy League a dinosaur’s story, because We’re Back! We have double the number of players as last year, all staring down an Oscar race that’s completely wide open and a fall calendar stacked with big, tentpole-y movies that could have the kind of box-office impact on scoring that we’ve seen only a handful of times over the past two years.

All of which is to say, to quote Tashi Duncan: LET’S GOOOO.

It was fascinating to watch the rosters roll in and see which movies were getting the most attention. Here’s the top ten:

1. Anora: 5,121 rosters
2. The Brutalist: 4,228
3. Wicked: 4,029
4. Dune: Part 2: 3,370
5. Nosferatu: 3,014
6. Moana 2: 2,997
7. Saturday Night: 2,818
8. Conclave: 2,807
9. Joker: Folie a Deux: 2,738
10. The Wild Robot: 2,725

Anora, the winner at Cannes, appeared on more than one-third of all rosters. That’s a huge show of faith that the movie’s charms will translate upon its American debut. (I share that faith — I drafted Anora for my own roster.) I expected The Brutalist to be a hot item, what with its huge buzz at the fall festivals and its relatively thrifty $10 price tag.

MFL drafters did open their pocketbooks, shelling out for Dune 2 ($35), Moana 2 ($30), Wicked ($20), Conclave ($20), and Joker ($20), with all but Dune 2 eligible to earn box-office points. Then there are two wild cards in this top ten. Saturday Night was an $8 buy in part because it didn’t light the world on fire in its festival run, but SNL is a familiar brand, so I can see the draw. And Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu is waiting for all you freaks who want to go watch a vampire movie on Christmas Day, and I hope it makes a billion dollars.

As a quick reminder of what’s at stake, this year’s prizes — which you can peruse here — include a Roku 4K TV, a Roku streambar, Bowers & Wilkins wireless earbuds, a LEGO Jaws set, and subscriptions to the Criterion Channel and MoviePass. But it’s a long road from here to you chilling in front of your brand new TV, and that road is paved with MFL points. How you earn those points is laid out here, but since we haven’t entered the awards portion of the year, all we have are box-office bonuses. Here’s what your movies will earn for various milestones:

Every $1 million earned: 1 point
Clears $25 million: 10-point bonus
Clears $50 million: 15-point bonus
Clears $75 million: 15-point bonus
Clears $100 million: 20-point bonus
Clears $125 million: 15-point bonus
Clears $150 million: 15-point bonus
Clears $175 million: 15-point bonus
Clears $200 million: 25-point bonus
Reaches No. 1 at the domestic box office: 20 points per week spent at No. 1

And speaking of box office …

After the first weekend of live gameplay, we have just one movie earning box-office points — and it’s not earning nearly as many as anyone who drafted it (or anyone at Warner Bros.) may have hoped. Joker: Folie à Deux opened amid a flurry of terrible buzz, which started with critics following its premiere at the Venice Film Festival and now includes the general public, who gave the film a “D” Cinemascore. While, yes, it debuted as the No. 1 film of the weekend, Joker only pulled in 40million.That’slessthanhalfofthe40 million. That’s less than half of the 40million.That’slessthanhalfofthe96 million the first Joker made over the same weekend five years ago.

What exactly went wrong here? Was it the reviews that called the film everything from “boring” to “trolling its audience”? Did the Joker bros who lined up for the first movie’s nihilism and Scorsese allusions stay away because this one was (despite the protestations of everybody involved) a musical? Was it because Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga seemed thoroughly uninterested in the movie even as they were promoting it? Yes to perhaps all of these things!

None of this is great news for the folks who drafted Folie à Deux, except for the fact that as of right now, they’re the only ones with points. The other MFL-eligible movie that opened this weekend was The Outrun, Saoirse Ronan’s indie flick where she plays an alcoholic in windswept northern Britain. That movie played on barely over 500 screens and hasn’t passed the $1 million threshold yet.

So for now, Joker: Folie à Deux gets 40 points (1 point per million earned) + 20 points (for its No. 1 placement at the box office) + 10 points (for clearing the $25 million threshold). That’s 70 points in total. If you drafted the movie, congrats on ending the first weekend in a 2,738-way tie for first place. Here’s the full leaderboard:

After last Thursday’s deadline for picks, we went through and tidied up the databases, including pruning some mini-leagues that only had one person (congratulations, you won/lost). What remained were 1,144 mini-leagues in the game this year—and if your league contains at least ten players, then you’re eligible for prizes! The top ten teams from each league will have their scores added together, and the winning league’s top team will win a Roku 4K TV. There will also be MoviePass subscriptions for the rest of the winning league’s top 10.

We’ll delve further into the mini-leagues as the season goes on, including which Podcast-related mini-leagues are performing best. For now, let’s appreciate some of this season’s best-named leagues:

An or A in the title: Love an MFL name that is also a Cinematrix reference.
Charli 4DX: There are lots of Brat names for both leagues and teams this year, but this was my favorite of the Charli puns.
Glad He Ate Her Too: Elite wordplay here.
gwen and erin in direct competition: This is exactly what it sounds like: two people named Gwen and Erin made a mini-league called “gwen and erin in direct competition.”
Las Brutalistas: “László Tóth, what was the culture that made you say culture was for you?”
LongLeagues: Like Longlegs, but … you get it.
Nosferadudes: “Bro, what do you think of Eggers’s decision to film with an eye toward 19th-century romanticism instead of the more expected Gothic style?”
Oscar Meyer Winners: A pub-trivia classic for a reason.
squibb game: Everybody, go watch Thelma right now!
this is me dotdotdot now: Everybody, go watch This Is Me … Now right now!
We Used To Be A Book Club: Really hope this is a true story.
Yorgos Enjoyers and Dave: What’s your problem, Dave?

We’re going to allow a couple weeks for people to email us (moviesleague@vulture.com) and make whatever corrections are needed to your mini-league designation—which can include adding yourself to a podcast mini-league. After October 14, all mini-leagues will be locked.

As always, I appreciate a good pun, an elaborate piece of wordplay, or a movie mashup that feels particularly bonkers. This year’s early contenders for Best Team Name include:

Anora Ephron: This one made me so mad that I didn’t think of it first.
Macho Man Randy Savage: Nothing to do with a movie, but I appreciate the tribute.
Etruscan Tomb Raiders Have Feelings Too: La Chimera was pool-eligible last season, but this is still an incredible team name.
100Percent Nightbitch: I know if we could use special characters, that this would be 100% Nightbitch, and that is how I will choose to see it.
Glengarry Glen Powell: Boom. Yes.
Sydney Ellen Wade Rautha Harokonnen: Annette Bening and Austin Butler should do an actors-on-actors-style interview with each other where the only thing they talk about is this team name.
Poolman Was Robbed: Chris Pine, thrilled to have you playing this year.

In terms of the most used references, a few jump out: _The Substance_’s grotesque amalgam creature Monstro Elisasue and the members of the love triangle in Challengers. The best Substance names range from simple (Justice for Monstro Elisasue) to baroque (Anora and Monstro elisasue go to vista del mar), from predictive (Monstro Elisasue Hosts the 97th Academy Awards) to utterly sublime (Oh Lord Sweet Baby Jesus Not Monstro Elisasue).

Meanwhile, there are 21 Patrick Zweig–based team names and only nine that mention Art Donaldson. (Three team names make like Luca Guadagnino and mash the two together.) I’m going to list all 21 Patrick Zweig team names, because I think it’s a window into what people took away from Challengers and that character in particular:

Team Patrick Zewig
ZWEIG NATION
AllCourtZweig
ZweigByZweig
Patrick Zweigs Churro
Patrick Zweig Leering at Churros
The Banana Patrick Zweig Was Eating
PatrickZweigBanana
PatrickZewigsBreakfastBagel
Patrick Zweig’s Dunkin Sandwich
Patrick Zweig’s Breakfast Sandwich
patrick zweigs tinder date
Patrick Zweigs Thighs
Mr Zweig Goes to Tire Town
Anora Zweig
Partashi Donaldzweig
Monstro DonalZweig
Eyes Zweig Shut
Bratrick Zweig
ZweigArt Hawterach
The Wickedly Talented Patrick Zweig

If that doesn’t capture what we’re doing here in the Movies Fantasy League, I’m not sure what will. Next week, Saturday Night and We Live in Time open in limited release (maybe they can crack the $1 million threshold), while the Pharrell Williams Lego biopic Piece by Piece opens wide. We’re off to a very goofy start.

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

We Are So Back