This is the scoring recap for Week 12 of Vulture’s Movies Fantasy League. If you want to compete for pride and prizes against more than 19,400 other film buffs, there’s still a few more days to join: Visit the league hub for information on how to play, and/or click the button below to submit an entry.
DRAFT YOUR TEAM
It’s always nice when the movie studios take a weekend to let the moviegoing public get their Christmas shopping done. Without any new blockbusters debuting (Ella McCay is a lot of things, but it’s no blockbuster), the box office had a down week overall. But no film was down more than Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, which dropped almost 70 percent from last weekend’s No. 1 finish. The Josh Hutcherson–starring “What if Chuck E. Cheese was scary?” sequel still managed to climb to $95 million and will surely cross the $100 million bonus threshold in the coming week.
But retaking the top spot in its third week of release was Disney’s Zootopia 2. The will-they-or-won’t-they buddy-cop story is proving to be pretty resilient, box-office-wise, having picked up $26 million over the weekend for a total of $258 million. Including bonus points, Zootopia 2 stands only 34 points behind Wicked: For Good as the best box-office performer of the season so far — and costing $20 less than Wicked to draft in the first place.
The rest of the box-office this weekend was a smattering of sub-$5 million performers. James L. Brooks’ gas-leak-flavored Ella McCay cleared only $2 million in its debut weekend, which was twice as good as the holiday-horror remake Silent Night, Deadly Night.
Other box-office earners of note (numbers are cumulative box office to date):
Wicked: For Good: $312 million
Now You See Me: Now You Don’t: $59 million
Eternity: $12 million
Hamnet: $7 million
Predator: Badlands: $90 million
One Battle After Another: $71 million
The Running Man: $37 million
Rental Family: $9 million
Sentimental Value: $3 million
A Long List of Oscars Shortlists
On Tuesday, the Academy released shortlists for 12 categories, limiting the field of available nominees to a more manageable handful in Best Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Visual Effects, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Original Score, and Best Original Song, plus International Feature, Documentary Feature, and the three short-film categories. Plus, the brand-new Best Casting category debuted with a shortlist of ten films, including most of the usual suspects that have been dominating the awards conversation so far (One Battle After Another, Sinners, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, Sentimental Value, Frankenstein, The Secret Agent, and Wicked: For Good) plus a few less expected contenders (Weapons and Sirât). With five MFL points available per each appearance on a shortlist, the points were able to accumulate quickly for those movies that appeared on multiple lists.
Sinners and Wicked: For Good led the pack with eight appearances each, good for 40 MFL points. Both of those films were boosted by double mentions in the Original Song category. Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein was close behind with 30, showing typical craft-category strength for a GDT movie. The overall Oscar front-runner and MFL points leader One Battle After Another showed up on five lists for 25 points, tied with the vroom-vroom car movie F1 and a surprisingly robust showing for Sirât.
A handful of movies saw their first MFL points of the season, including Edward Berger’s Ballad of a Small Player, shortlisted for its cinematography; Superman, listed in both Sound and Visual Effects; Captain America: Brave New World, which somehow ended up being the one Marvel movie to appear on the lists (for Laura Karpman’s score); documentary Apocalypse in the Tropics; Iraq’s International Feature representative The President’s Cake; and despised summer blockbuster Jurassic World: Rebirth. Also, good news for anybody irresponsible enough to have drafted either Alto Knights or The Electric State: You picked up five inexplicable points today!
The full points roundup:
Sinners: 40
Wicked: For Good: 40
Frankenstein: 30
F1: 25
One Battle After Another: 25
Sirât: 25
Avatar: Fire and Ash: 20
Marty Supreme: 20
Hamnet: 15
Sentimental Value: 15
Train Dreams: 15
Tron: Ares: 15
Bugonia: 10
Come See Me in the Good Light: 10
Diane Warren: Relentless: 10
Nuremberg: 10
Sound of Falling: 10
Superman: 10
The Secret Agent: 10
Weapons: 5
Ballad of a Small Player: 5
Die My Love: 5
Nouvelle Vague: 5
Song Sung Blue: 5
The Alabama Solution: 5
Apocalypse in the Tropics: 5
Cover-Up: 5
The Perfect Neighbor: 5
2000 Meters to Andrivka: 5
It Was Just an Accident: 5
The President’s Cake: 5
No Other Choice: 5
Left-Handed Girl: 5
The Voice of Hind Rajab: 5
Alto Knights: 5
The Smashing Machine: 5
Captain America: Brave New World: 5
Hedda: 5
A House of Dynamite: 5
Jay Kelly: 5
Wake Up Dead Man: 5
KPop Demon Hunters: 5
Highest 2 Lowest: 5
The Ballad of Wallis Island: 5
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning: 5
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere: 5
The Electric State: 5
Jurassic World: Rebirth: 5
The Lost Bus: 5
What’s Up, Docs?
The Producers Guild won’t get to nominating its top ten feature films until January, but it snuck out an announcement for its six nominees for Outstanding Producer of Documentary Theatrical Motion Pictures. Three of those films were MFL eligible, earning 15 points apiece: The Alabama Solution, Cover-Up, and The Perfect Neighbor. All three should be considered top contenders for Oscar nominations — they all made the shortlist.
Deadline Ahead!
As we have alerted you with our email updates, the final day to draft a MFL team is this Thursday, December 18. If you know anyone who still wants to play, it’s now or never. I’m not gonna lie: The pickings are slim. Very few movies have yet to open or accrue awards points. Only 16 movies are still available to draft, and a lot of those won’t open until next year. Viable movies for straggler rosters to draft in these waning days include Anaconda, The Housemaid, The SpongeBob Movie: The Search for Squarepants, and A Magnificent Life. Who knows, maybe you’ll get a surprise hit with one of them!
Calendar
Upcoming releases:
The Voice of Hind Rajab: December 17
Avatar: Fire and Ash: December 19
Is This Thing On?: December 19
The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants: December 19
The Housemaid: December 19
Cover-Up: December 19
Zero A.D.: December 19
Father Mother Sister Brother: December 24
Anaconda: December 25
Marty Supreme: December 25
No Other Choice: December 25
Song Sung Blue: December 25
The Testament of Ann Lee: December 25
Upcoming awards:
Oscars shortlists: December 16
National Society of Film Critics Awards: January 3
Critics’ Choice Awards: January 4
SAG Actor Awards nominations: January 6
Directors Guild Awards nominations: January 8
Producers Guild Awards nominations: January 9
You can visit the MFL landing page to see the full leaderboard — and join our Discord server for additional data about each movie in the MFL, plus much more.
Questions? Feedback? Can’t find your team or mini-league on the leaderboard? Drop us a line at moviesleague@vulture.com.