Here are the final results of the 2004 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 The Bourne Supremacy, which made $165 million. The runner up on the sleeper film was, of all things, Farenheit 9/11, which made $118 million. Dodgeball and The Village were just slightly behind that. The most popular sleeper choices were The Terminal and The Village, both sensible choices, but ultimately disappointments for their studios. Both were films I considered very seriously for inclusion on the main list, this year.
This year, 31 people entered the contest, up by one from last year. Just like last year. I like to consider it a slow, but steady, increase in the contest's popularity.
And the winner is Dan Owen, with 55 points. Mr. Owen did very well on Spiderman 2 and Shrek 2, and pretty well on several other films. This year, the sleeper points did not change the winner, since Mr. Owen chose Garfield: The Movie. Our runner-up, however, Sanjeev Motwani, leaped from a tie for third to second place on the strength of choosing the sleeper. Jeremy Davis, who came in third, did not choose the sleeper right, but made good guesses generally.
Atli Sigurjonsson successfully predicted a $142 million gross for I, Robot. No one else hit a film's gross on the nose. Last year, the only on-the-nose guess was for Bad Boys II, and the year before that for Men in Black II. There must be something about Will Smith in a summer film that's predictable, I guess. Other than lots of car crashes and things blowing up, I mean.
Here are the complete results, in increasing point order:
Thanks to all who entered.
I made good choices this year. My list included six of the top seven grossers for the summer. My only mistake was including Troy instead of The Bourne Supremacy, which I still find a bit surprising and don't think was especially predictable. If I had changed it, Troy would have been the sleeper, and I bet almost everyone would have gotten those points. This year, no film broke out of the pack unexpectedly, the way Pirates of the Caribbean did last year.