1998 Summer Box Office Blockbuster Contest Results

Here's the final results of the summer blockbuster contest announced about four months ago. To remind you, the point of the contest was to predict how well six big summer movies would do, and to choose the film not on that list that would do the best. The six films I chose and their final grosses were -

• "Armageddon" $192.5 million
• "Godzilla" $135.9 million
• "Lethal Weapon IV" $126.3 million
• "The Mask of Zorro" $88.2 million
• "Mulan" $117.9 million
• "The Truman Show" $124.9 million

The film not on this list that performed best over the summer was "Saving Private Ryan," which made $168.6 million, not quite catching up to "Armageddon" as the most successful film of the summer, but exceeding all other films. "Saving Private Ryan" is still making over $10 million per week, while "Armageddon" is not in the weekly top ten any longer, so "Saving Private Ryan" is expected to be the most successful film of the summer. For the second year in a row, I failed to choose the top performing summer film, in the long run, for the contest. (This year, of course, the overall top performing film will be "Titanic," which was ineligible because it opened last Christmas. Those with long memories may recollect it was one of the choices in last summer's contest, but did not open during the summer. The folks who predicted it would open during the summer probably won't want to be reminded of their predictions of its success.)

This year, 40 people entered the contest, the biggest pool so far.

For the first time, we have a tie for the winner, between Brandon Gray and Ken Rudolph, each with 66 points. I considered various tie breakers - Mr. Gray hit right on for one film ("Mulan"), unlike Mr. Rudolph or anyone else in the contest, and was the best picker on 3 of the six films; but Mr. Rudolph was extremely consistent, being the only contest participant to get points for all films. Each excelled in his own way, so we'll leave it at a tie. Beth Gilligan came in third, with 52 points.

Twelve of the participants chose "Saving Private Ryan" as the sleeper film, demonstrating the wisdom of not underestimating the box office appeal of Steven Spielberg's films. Seventeen of our participants thought "The X-Files" movie would be the sleeper. Interestingly, not one participant thought that "Dr. Doolittle," the runner-up for the sleeper film, would be the sleeper.

Mr. Gray's bullseye on "Mulan" was the only absolutely correct guess. But Mike D'Angelo deserves special mention for the most spectacularly incorrect guess of the contest, with a prediction of $342 million for "Godzilla." Unfortunately for Mr. D'Angelo, Louis, the Budweiser spokescritter, proved to be a more popular lizard than Godzilla.

Here are the complete results, in increasing point order: