Here are the final results of the 2003 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:
The eligible film not on this list that performed best over the summer was Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, which made $275 million. It's still going strong, and last weekend, after the contest ended, passed The Matrix Reloaded. It looks like it won't catch up with Finding Nemo, the summer's biggest hit, but who can say how long its legs will be? The runner up on the sleeper film was 2 Fast 2 Furious, far back around the $125 million mark.
This year, 30 people entered the contest, one less than last year.
And the winner is Bjorn Olson, with 51 points. Mr. Olson did well on Finding Nemo, Hulk, and The Matrix Reloaded, but being one of only two contestants to guess the sleeper right put him over the top. The other contestant who guessed it, Don Marks, used the extra points to slip into second place, with 48 points. Had the majority expectation held and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle kicked butt, our two contestants tied for third place, Andrew Johnson and Ken Rudolph, would have won.
Lee Boyle successfully predicted a $135 million gross for Bad Boys II. No one else hit a film on the nose. Last year, the only on-the-nose guesses were for Men in Black II. Something relatively predictable about those Will Smith sequels, I guess.
Here are the complete results, in increasing point order:
Thanks to all who entered.
I'm pretty happy with the choices I made. The first five choices I found easy, but I thought a lot about the sixth one. My heart told me to pick Pirates of the Caribbean, since it was the film I personally wanted to see most among the summer films, but my head told me that pirate movies never make money and that I should not forget The Country Bears movie. So I chose Bad Boys II, instead. From the entries, it looked like my mistake had been not choosing Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, but the way it actually worked out, all six of the films I chose did better than Charlie's Angels, and Pirates of the Caribbean was the only film that did better than any of my six choices.
Leaving aside X2, of course. I've read that now Hollywood considers the summer movie season to begin in the first week of May, so my valiant attempt to hold the line against an ever- expanding summer movie season seems doomed. Next year, I'll probably start the contest a little earlier to include anything that comes out in May.