The Fantasy Box Office
2026 Movie Analysis

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

left

Happy new year! 2026 is shaping up to be the biggest year of Fantasy Box Office by far. Even though it's early January, we've already surpassed 2025's numbers of leagues, and new players are signing up and drafting every day. With all that data, we're taking a look at the most-drafted movies of the year. Whether you're preparing for your draft or your league has already drafted, read on to find out what movies are anticipated to make a splash by other Fantasy Box Office players. (Officers?) This list is a temperature check on what Fantasy Box Officers think about the upcoming year in film. Will all these predictions be right? No way! Every year there's plenty of surprises that nobody saw coming – whether that's breakout hits, new trends, or disastrous bombs. Think of this as a time capsule that we can review in a year to see how things actually played out. Overall, this year is remarkably balanced compared to previous years. There are almost 30 retuturning franchises in 2026, including heavyweights like Star Wars , The Avengers , Spider-Man , and Dune . Proven filmmakers like Christopher Nolan and Steven Spielberg are releasing big-budget original movies, while Pixar and Illumination are each putting out two animated films. There are an overwhelming amount of movies with a legitimate shot at $1b, even as the future of theatrical exhibition looks grim . (Gulp!) Without further ado, let's look at the most popular upcoming Hits, Bombs, and Winter Picks! As a reminder: within a league, each movie can only be drafted once, so we'll be looking at how many leagues drafted each movie. The Hits The Super Mario Galaxy Movie The numbers don't lie: everybody wants Mario. Virtually every league drafted Illumination's sequel to 2023's The Super Mario Bros. Movie , one of the most profitable movies released since the game began. Galaxy was drafted as a Hit Pick in 71% of leagues, and as a Winter Pick in the remaining 29%. Its popularity makes sense. Illumination produces movies for around $100m and regularly breaks $1b in gross. It's hard to find a better return on your investment – that's the main reason CEO Chris Meledandri is one of the most powerful people in Hollywood. If you have Mario in your league, congratulations! You're the player to beat and will have a sizeable lead leading into the Summer draft. Avengers: Doomsday In a pretty distant second place is the latest entry in Marvel's flagship franchise. Avengers: Doomsday was drafted in 62% of leagues – far fewer than Mario Galaxy . (Since Avengers releases in December, it is currently only eligible as a Hit Pick. The remaining leagues will be able to draft it later in the year, during the Fall draft.) In my opinion, this is the biggest question mark of the year. The MCU has been in a slump since Avengers: Endgame , with a few bright spots like Deadpool & Wolverine and Spider-Man: No Way Home . Doomsday boasts an absolutely stuffed cast, including many of the franchise's legacy heroes, so it may be able to capture the old magic. I wouldn't be surprised if it hit $1.5b or more – but I also could see a world where it tops out around $800m. However, it will likely have an enormous budget, considering all of those A-list actors' salaries and the MCU's track record of VFX bloat and reshoots. Even if it outgrosses Mario Galaxy , its budget will likely make it less profitable in Fantasy Box Office scoring. And at the time of this writing, it's set to open the same day as Dune: Part Three – which will get all IMAX screens . Spider-Man: Brand New Day The third most popular Hit Pick, Spider-Man: Brand New Day was drafted in 53% of leagues. Remember, No Way Home was one of the biggest post-pandemic movies, and Spider-Man has consistently punched above his weight across franchise reboots and animated reinventions. It probably won't reach No Way Home levels without Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield, but once the marketing ramps up, we'll have a clearer sense of its ceiling. Like Doomsday, Spider-Man will give up all its IMAX screens to Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey . (IMAX likes doing business with auteurs who push the medium and have close relationships with Nolan and Villeneuve.) Hit Picks Lightning Round The Odyssey – 45% of leagues. A Best Picture contender and potential $1b grosser. One of my most anticipated movies of the year, and my own Hit Pick in my personal league. Toy Story 5 – 36% of leagues. Dune: Part Three – 18% of leagues. Minions 3 – 12% of leagues. Moana – 11% of leagues. The Bombs Masters of the Universe Compared to Hit Picks, Bomb Picks were pretty evenly distributed across all movies. Every big movie was drafted as a Bomb in at least a few leagues, except for Mario Galaxy. Nobody wants to bet against the Italian plumbers! In my opinion, there was only one ultra-potent Bomb Pick this year based on known information at the start of 2026. MOTU doesn't have a reported budget yet, but early estimates peg it just south of $200m. With no built-in fanbase and an onscreen performance by Jared Leto, this has almost no shot at profitability. ( Tron: Ares was one of the biggest bombs of 2025.) 46% of leagues drafted it as a Bomb Pick, and I got it in my personal league. The one thing that makes me nervous: MGM/Amazon is handling U.S. distribution, which means there's a chance it gets pushed to streaming if the studio gets cold feet. (Maybe we need another Jared Leto meme so the studio knows how excited we are to see him again.) Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow Craig Gillespie's follow-up to Superman was drafted as a Bomb in 20% of leagues, making it the second most popular Bomb Pick. That surprised me – Superman did well! Were people put off by the paint-by-numbers trailer? Have they already lost interest in James Gunn's DC universe? My guess: out of the few summer movies that have reported or estimated budgets, Supergirl is currently priced the highest. Forbes pegged it at $200m , which would make it a little more expensive than MOTU – but I expect it to gross far more. Its reported budget could shift between now and release date, but I'd be surprised if this ends up losing money. Mercy Chris Pratt stars in this Screenlife AI murder trial directed by Timur Bekmambetov. It was drafted as a Bomb Pick in 21% of leagues. Coincidentally, it was drafted by an equal amount of leagues as a Winter Pick – meaning as many players expect it to succeed as to fail. Mercy is one of January's biggest releases, making it the only movie on this list with a full-force marketing push. Trailers played in front of Avatar: Fire and Ash and Marty Supreme , and the response has been... mixed. We don't know the budget yet. On a personal note: I'm friends with some of the people on the editing team, and worked alongside them on Missing , a Screenlife movie from 2023. Those movies are tough to make! I'm excited to see all their hard work onscreen. Bomb Pick Lightning Round Greenland 2: Migration – 20% of leagues. The Bride! – 16% of leagues drafted it as a Bomb Pick, but 55% drafted it as a Winter Pick. Street Fighter – 16% of leagues. Mortal Kombat 2 – 14% of leagues. The Mandalorian & Grogu – 13% of leagues. (Somebody tell Disney – they might be in trouble!) Winter Picks Scream 7 The latest installment in the meta horror franchise was the most popular Winter Pick, drafted by 83% of leagues. Scream VI was the highest grossing Scream film yet (unadjusted for inflation), but Scream 7 lost its predecessor's directors and fired its stars for pro-Palestine comments, prompting calls for a boycott. Fun fact: the Scream franchise has grossed $911m since the first installment in 1996. 7 will take it into the billion-dollar club – joining other horror stalwarts like Saw, It, and Resident Evil. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple 81% of leagues are taking it to the Bone Temple. The first 28 Years Later – the third entry in the 28 Days franchise – was a modest success in the game, barely breaking even. Bone Temple is unlikely to swing anybody's game too far in either direction. In the first few months of the game, that can be a smart conservative play. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come The sequel to 2019's micro-budget, ultra-profitable Ready or Not was drafted by 79% of leagues. No word on its budget yet, but this looks like a cheap pick that should make a solid return. Winter Picks Lightning Round Wuthering Heights – 76% of leagues. Project Hail Mary – 75% of leagues. Michael – 74% of leagues. (In my opinion, a total wildcard – and a possible billion-dollar grosser.) Hoppers – 73% of leagues. GOAT – 73% of leagues. Send Help – 60% of leagues. The Drama – 57% of leagues. Overall, this is the most exciting year of movies I've seen since I started playing in 2022 . There are still plenty of massive films not mentioned here – titles like Disclosure Day , Digger , and The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping are lying in wait, and are bound to be popular picks in the upcoming Summer and Fall drafts. Here's to another great year of Fantasy Box Office!

The Fantasy Box Office 2026 Movie Analysis

How to Plan
Your First Draft

The Social Network

Your first Fantasy Box Office draft contains some of the biggest decisions you'll make all year. It’s the one draft where you’re making a Hit Pick and a Bomb Pick, plus your Seasonal Picks and your Alt Pick. Without a proper plan, you could make some bad decisions that throw off the whole trajectory of your year. As the co-founder of Fantasy Box Office, I've been playing the game since 2022 , and over the years I've placed first, last, and almost everywhere in between. I've made many mistakes and learned many lessons. If you’re prepping for your first draft, here’s the strategy I’d use. 1. Build a Longer List Than You Think You Need Before you draft, you’ll need to create a “wish list” of movies that you expect will do well. The trick is that you have to make the wish list much longer than it needs to be, because your opponents will probably have their eyes on all the same movies. Depending on your league size and when you draft, you might have five to six movies to draft. Do not walk in with a wish list of five or six movies – you should research 20 to 30 movies and prioritize them from most important to least important, because your opponents are going to draft some of your favorites in round one. If you only “like” four movies and three of them get taken, you’re suddenly drafting scared. How do you decide what movies should go on the list? You’re looking for moderately budgeted movies that are expected to make a lot of money. You have a few tools available to help you decide… 2. Use Resources to Narrow Down Your Choices One of the most daunting parts of your first draft is the sheer volume of movies. You probably don’t recognize most of the titles on the Calendar , which makes it difficult to build a strategy. This is where it helps to lean on a few resources that can turn a giant spreadsheet of movies into something readable. First, try sorting the Calendar by Hype Score to see the list ordered by what people are actually paying attention to right now. The Hype Score is derived from a mix of other users’ draft analytics, YouTube views, and news article mentions. It’s not a perfect metric, and other people are often wrong, but it’s a helpful way to quickly see what other people see. It’s a great starting point for building your list. From there, you can sanity-check the broader temperature with a couple outside tools. Letterboxd’s upcoming films page is great for seeing what movie fans are tracking. (Just remember some of those titles will be limited or streaming releases, so they won’t be eligible in Fantasy Box Office.) IMDb’s popularity ranking is another useful check if a movie could have the juice. It has an obvious recency bias, meaning that it will heavily lean towards movies that are right around the corner instead of movies that are months away. Finally, you should definitely use the-numbers.com to check box office performance and budget information from similar movies in the franchise or genre. (We call these "comps.") You may be surprised – sometimes your favorite movies didn't make much money. None of these resources should dictate your picks, but together they’ll help you separate “movies that exist” from “movies people are actually likely to show up for.” 3. Research Your Movies' Budgets Our Fantasy Box Office Calendar sources budgets from trades and other reputable sources. In most cases, these budgets aren't published until the movie comes out. To prepare for your draft, you'll have to make some educated guesses on your prospective movies' budgets. Research previous movies by the director, studio, or franchise to get a sense of where the upcoming movie's budget may fall. As a general rule of thumb: • Independent films: $10-30m • Movie-star dramas: $30-80m • Big franchise action movies: $100-300m+ You can also check the last few years of movies on the Fantasy Box Office Calendar, so you get a sense of how previous movies did in Fantasy Box Office’s scoring system. 4. Plan Your Hit Pick Your Hit Pick is your chance to plant your flag on what you think will be the biggest movie of the year. It’s the most important decision you’ll make in Fantasy Box Office. Remember: the Hit Pick doesn’t score differently than any other pick. A movie drafted as a Hit Pick is scored the same as if you drafted it as a Winter Pick, Summer Pick, or Fall Pick. The difference is timing and importance. Every year, there are always a handful of films that are big enough to move the needle. These are usually big franchises, movies from proven directors, or the one title that just feels like it could become a cultural event. Your Hit Pick is your first chance to grab one of those months before anyone has reviews, before marketing really ramps up, before you “know” anything. You’re often betting on a movie that doesn’t come out for six months or more. That’s why it matters. Ideally, your Hit Pick can cross the rarefied $1 billion threshold. That can be the difference between first place and last place. And if you pick poorly, it’s hard to recover. A painful example: in 2023, I drafted The Little Mermaid as my Hit Pick because in January it looked like a big tentpole movie at the center of a culture war. It came out, basically nobody saw it, and it was a brutal loss on my 2023 slate. This year, I've picked Zootopia 2 , which has been out for only two weeks at publication time. When the dust settles, it could be the most profitable movie of the entire year, and might catapult me from third place into first. The Hit Pick really matters. 5. Scope Your Bomb Pick Your Bomb Pick can be equally important, depending on your league’s Bomb Damage mode . If your league is using Savage Mode, bombs can be brutal. If your league is using Split Mode, they’re still impactful, but less likely to crater half the league. The key to the Bomb Pick is simple: pick an expensive movie that nobody sees. The key word is "expensive." A common beginner mistake is drafting a small indie release as your Bomb Pick. That won’t do much damage because the budget is what matters. You’re looking for a big swing that’s likely to miss. If you pay attention to the trades, you can often spot a bomb far out. Troubled production stories. Reshoots. Budget panic headlines. Weird release-date shifts. Franchise fatigue. A movie can tell you it’s in trouble long before it comes out. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning was a pretty obvious bomb candidate in 2025 because the previous movie, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning , didn’t do well. Both movies were enormously expensive and the production narrative was shaky for months. A lot of people drafted it as a Bomb Pick, and it ended up losing over $400 million in the game. The biggest mistake you can make with your Bomb Pick is to draft something profitable . If you draft a bomb that turns out to be a hit, you’re literally paying your opponents. It's an easy mistake to make – you could draft a Bomb Pick many months before a film is released, and before the marketing buzz starts up. In 2023, I drafted The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes as my Bomb Pick because at the beginning of that year it looked like a movie nobody would care about. Well... it ended up making almost $100 million in profit. I gave all of my opponents cash on the table. 6. Balance Your Slate with Seasonal Picks Now you’re drafting the actual body of your studio slate. Depending on when you draft and how many people are in your league, you’ll have a handful of seasonal picks (Winter, Summer, Fall) and a seasonal Alt Pick. This part is about balance. You want a mix of movies that can actually make money, and movies that won’t destroy you if they don’t. Solid franchises and reliable directors can give you a baseline. Low-budget horror is often a smart play because it’s one of the most reliable genres in terms of profitability. If you’re feeling conservative, you can also draft a couple smaller movies with low budgets that aren’t going to swing your season either way. If they recoup, great. If they don’t, you won’t cry. You might also want to take a few swings on original titles by great directors or actors. Sometimes you can pull in something that nobody else saw coming. Sinners is a good example. Early in the year it wasn’t a popular pick across leagues because nobody knew what it was going to be. By the time it came out, the people who took the risk made $140 million in profit. 7. Use Your Alt Picks as Insurance (or Vibes) Alt picks only matter if one of your movies gets pushed out of the season or moved to streaming. Most of the time, they sit there quietly. That means your alt pick can be drafted in two totally different ways depending on your mood. If any of your movies seem like they could shift, draft your alt like insurance. Something safe that you’d actually be happy to slot in if one of your real picks slides. Aim for a low-budget indie or horror. If you’re feeling confident, your alt can be a pure vibes pick. An awards play that won’t make money and won’t matter in the standings, but gives you bragging rights and something to root for if it breaks out. 8. The Simplest Way to Walk In Prepared Before your first draft, do three things: • Decide your Hit Pick. • Find two or three real Bomb Pick candidates. • Build a seasonal list that’s much longer than your pick count. Once you get your first draft under your belt, the next few will be much easier. For one, you'll be more experienced, and you'll also only be drafting Seasonal Picks and an Alt Pick. Stay up-to-date with headlines on the News Feed so you can go in prepared!

How to Plan Your First Draft

Bending the Rules for
Greta Gerwig's Narnia

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Curating the Fantasy Box Office calendar is usually pretty straightforward. For the most part, we stick with wide theatrical releases based around US release dates. Sometimes there are tricky movies by smaller distributors or slow platform releases that require a curatorial decision, and sometimes there are last-minute additions to the calendar that explode out of nowhere (like 2025's Demon Slayer or Chainsaw Man ). But mostly, things fall into place. This year, there’s one movie that breaks all of our usual rules — Greta Gerwig’s Narnia . Greta Gerwig Breaks the Mold Greta Gerwig's Narnia movie is being produced by Netflix, but is scheduled for a limited IMAX run in late November 2026. Currently, the plan is for the movie to play in 1,000 IMAX screens for two weeks, but that could change over the course of the year. It's an unprecedented distribution deal that has been controversial amongst theater owners ; some say IMAX working with Netflix could "undermine" the rest of the theatrical industry. Netflix will be using up the most valuable movie screens during a popular moviegoing window, which impacts other studios that are releasing movies around the same time and sets a dangerous precedent for Netflix's competitors. (Netflix, after all, says that theatrical exhibition is a dying business model .) At the same time, Netflix could actually be warming up to putting more of their movies in theaters in the wake of a potential Warner Bros. merger. There are still a lot of moving parts here — the theater count might go up, or down, or disappear entirely. Why it's Difficult for Fantasy Box Office Normally, we'd exclude a Netflix limited release from the Fantasy Box Office calendar, especially one with so much uncertainty. But since this is a follow-up to the biggest pop-culture phenomenon of the decade and is playing in IMAX, it deserves its own consideration. If we include Narnia in the game as a normal movie, it'd be an unfairly powerful Bomb Pick. It is highly unlikely to make its money back since it doesn't have a normal theatrical run, and Netflix movies usually have larger budgets to make up for smaller backend profit participation. Bomb Picks are supposed to be about predicting Hollywood's biggest blunders, not exploiting convoluted exhibition deals. Still, if Greta Gerwig is able to capture the zeitgeist again, we'd be negligent to completely exclude the movie. We can't call ourselves Fantasy Box Office if we miss out on a big box office movement (especially if it revolves around a fantasy movie). So, therein lies the problem: how do we include a potential moviegoing moment, without disrupting the balance of the game? The "No Bombs" Rule We've programmed a special exception for Narnia. By default, players cannot draft the movie as a Bomb Pick, but are allowed to draft it as a Hit Pick, Fall Pick, or Fall Alt Pick. (We wouldn't recommend it for all the reasons laid out here, but you're free to do so if you believe in Greta Gerwig. We'd love to be proven wrong.) We hope this balances out the broken aggression of the movie, but still lets passionate Greta Gerwig fans draft her latest work. If your league disagrees with our assessment and prefers to draft it as a normal movie, commissioners can toggle that option back on in League Settings starting on December 1, 2025. For now, Narnia is the only movie that falls into this special category. If more movies have such strange circumstances, we may revisit or expand this mechanic in the future to keep up with Hollywood’s changing landscape. In the meantime, we’ll buy an IMAX ticket to Narnia as soon as we can — and hope that Gerwig’s next movie is a full-blown theatrical release!

Bending the Rules for Greta Gerwig's Narnia

Building a Better Bomb

Oppenheimer 

We’re always looking for ways to improve the Fantasy Box Office game rules. Looking back on 2025, we watched many studios get pulverized by a string of historic box office bombs — Tron: Ares , Snow White , and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning , to name a few. That left a lot of players more than a billion dollars in the red, with no real path to climb out. We’ve been playing Fantasy Box Office for four years now , and patterns like this stand out over time. As we set the game up for 2026, we wanted to make the Bomb Pick less destructive without losing the tension and strategy that makes them fun. For the new year, we're giving League Commissioners a new option for how bomb damage works. (The new options don’t affect two-player leagues at all, but they make a big difference for larger leagues.) Why Bombs Needed a Rethink Bomb picks have always been a tricky part of Fantasy Box Office. In the classic version of the game, a bomb gets duplicated onto every opponent’s slate — the same movie “released” by multiple studios at the same time, each absorbing the full loss. Thematically, that breaks the game's immersion - as if multiple movie studios separately produced and released the same movie on the same day. And in larger leagues, the mechanic is lethal. With many Bomb Picks on a studio's slate, one from each opponent, it's not unusual to end up hundreds of millions (or over a billion) dollars in the red with no realistic way out. Of course, the game is based on rankings, not absolute profit - you can still win your league even if your studio ended at a loss, as long as your opponents lost more. But it's not fun to open your scoreboard and see so much red. Introducing Bomb Damage Modes Starting in 2026, League Commissioners will be able to choose between two bomb systems. It's a no-commitment choice - you set it while creating your league, but you can also change it during the year if you regret your initial decision. Anytime you flip the switch, the system re-calculates all your league’s historical scores so you can compare how both modes impact the standings. Savage Mode (Classic) Savage Mode is the original high-impact version of the game. When you draft a bomb, the entire movie lands on every opponent’s slate, and each opponent takes the full loss. Some people like this because it makes the bomb pick feel closer to “shorting” in a stock-market sense: you gain the full impact of your Bomb Pick over each of your opponents, and it can create a major swing between you and the rest of the league. If your group enjoys that style of play, Savage Mode is still a great option. All existing leagues are automatically grandfathered into Savage Mode unless they choose to switch. Split Mode (New Default) In Split Mode, the bomb doesn’t duplicate. Instead, the movie is divided evenly among your opponents. In a five-player league, for example, each of your four opponents would take one-fourth of the financial outcome. So if you draft a movie that loses $100m, your opponents would each lose $25m. Thematically, this is much more tied to real-world numbers. Your opponents are co-producing the film together, which happens in real life on projects like F1: The Movie or Twisters . It keeps the strategic value of bombs intact, but the damage lands in a way that feels more grounded and less punishing. Split Mode is now the default for all new leagues. Existing leagues can switch over at any time. How Bombs Feel Now In many ways, both Bomb Damage modes are the same. It doesn't change your strategy when drafting a Bomb Pick, and in most leagues we tested, it doesn't dramatically alter the league's standings. Split Mode just helps prevent multiple bombs burying studios so deep in the negative, the game starts to feel hopeless. It gives every player a better shot at profitability. Closing Thoughts We’re always looking for ways to improve Fantasy Box Office and make the game more fun, more flexible, and more customizable. Split Mode is our first league rule that commissioners get to set for their own leagues, and adding more of these kinds of options is a major goal for 2026. Eventually, the League Commissioners will be able to fine-tune their own league's rules to create the exact game that they want to play. If you have any ideas for other kinds of configurable rules, please contact us — we always want to hear from you about the kinds of features you want to use.

Why Box Office?

Untitled Movie

Sometimes we are asked why the game focuses so much on movie financials, and not movie quality. After all, we’re all film fans, not studio executives. We care about the story and the experience of watching a movie, not whether it made back its budget. So why all the focus on profits and losses? Are we heartless robots? Following the box office is very relevant for every film fan, and we believe it makes for the most meaningful gameplay experience. We’ve tried the alternatives - for example, some people have suggested integrating Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic scores into the game to represent qualitative aspects of movies. At first glance, it might seem like that would measure “quality” better. But there are a few reasons we focus entirely on box office, and that we feel it's the most valid way to gamify an art form. ⸻ 1. Hollywood is in Trouble, and Box Office has Never Mattered More If you're reading this, you don’t need me to tell you that the theatrical experience is in a troubled place. As a crew member working in Hollywood, things are dicey right now. The film industry has never been slower. As I write this, film production in Los Angeles has hit just a new low , overall production spend is decreasing , and the biggest studios in the world are consolidating into fewer and fewer companies . As a result, movies’ financial success has never been more important. Every movie release is a data point, every ticket a shot fired in the battle against the demise of an institution. When something like Sinners does well, that’s not just a financial win. It means Ryan Coogler will probably get to make more original movies (once he's done with Black Panther 3) , and other filmmakers in similar positions might get more leash to tell stories that are personal to them, instead of getting sucked into the IP machine making - gag - streaming television shows. The flip side is that whenever a movie doesn't connect, that's one more reason studios might hesitate to make more movies like it. After Challengers and After the Hunt , will Luca Guadagnino get another chance at a big-budget adult-oriented drama? What does Mickey 17 or The Running Man mean for the next sci-fi adaptation? What studio would take a chance on a musical after A Big Bold Beautiful Journey and Kiss of the Spider Woman ? I don't care about movie executives losing money. I care about movie executives making more movies. I care about movie studios being able to take risks on exciting projects from new voices. I care about the environment my favorite things are made in. And a good film box office market is good for film fans. ⸻ 2. Box Office is the Cleanest Gameplay Mechanic Other games have tried combining Rotten Tomatoes scores or awards performance with box office data, using an algorithm to synthesize multiple metrics into a single score. In our opinion, that doesn’t work. It’s difficult to blend multiple metrics in a way that feels meaningful, balanced, and an accurate reflection of a movie’s performance. We’ve played some of these games - as we play them, we have to think more about the developer’s algorithms than the real-world movie landscape. As we strategize we’re looking for movies that are more likely to perform in the rules of the game, not the movies that will land the most with audiences (or critics). Box office is the cleanest translation of real-world data into points. The game remains a reflection of reality, and there’s never a question of how something performed. ⸻ 3. What You See is What You Get On the surface, lionizing box office returns may be seen as cynical; in practice, utilizing review scores introduces its own kind of cynicism. There’s no such thing as objectivity in art. While review scores can be helpful in determining whether to see a movie, it’s dangerous to mistake review scores for an objective assessment of quality, or success. Review aggregator sites have been manipulated by studios and come with their own statistical issues . They serve a utility in pop culture, but they're still labelling art with a quantitative number. At least with box office, there’s no misunderstanding. It’s a pure measure of how many people actually went out and paid to see a movie. It’s a reflection of how well a movie connected with audiences — a snapshot of its standing in the culture and the moment we’re living in. In the end, review sites are a representation of what a small group of people think about a movie; box office is a measurement of whether people actually went to see it. Closing Box office might sound corporate, but it’s really a measure of connection. It shows how audiences respond in real time. It’s simple, transparent, and more important than ever.

FADE IN

Avatar: The Way of Water

My name is Chris, and for the last few years I’ve been the day-to-day manager of Fantasy Box Office. We're heading into 2026, which is the first full calendar year on the website, so I wanted to finally pull back the curtain to talk about where the game came from, what it’s become, and where it’s going. Fantasy Box Office has been a passion of mine for years. In 2022, right as theaters were reopening, I joined up with three friends from film school to make a game out of our movie obsession. We went around in a circle and picked movies we each thought would do well in the burgeoning post-pandemic market. Every few weeks, we’d look up the latest box office numbers and plug them into a messy spreadsheet, and track which of us had drafted the most successful movies by the end of the year. We got excited to root for movies we’d championed, and bemoaned when our picks didn’t work. Although it was simple, it was shockingly fun. (I won, thanks to a combination of Avatar 2 , Top Gun: Maverick , and Elvis - and to celebrate, I created this video to cement my victory. ) More and more of our friends wanted to get in on the action, so I started figuring out how to automate it so that anybody could sign up and start their own league. Using tools I’d developed in my day job in film post-production , I pioneered a complex spreadsheet system built with Google Forms, Google Sheets, and Google Apps Script. It was messy, but it worked. I must have broken some records for the most complicated, spiraling network of interlocking spreadsheets ever created. We put up a couple posts on Reddit and got… a lukewarm response. People were excited by the idea of a fantasy game based around movies, but most couldn’t figure out how the heck to play a game that lived inside my Google Drive. The user experience was terrible. I probably broke some records for the worst game design ever created, too. But a few determined players pushed through the pain, and their enthusiasm inspired us to do more. People kept telling us the game gave them an excuse to reconnect with friends they hadn’t talked to in a while, or simply to have a reason to talk about movies again. It opened a lot of people up to a new way of caring about their favorite hobby. We realized there might be something here if we could lower the barrier to entry, spruce up the design, and make it look professional. That’s when I started developing this website, FantasyBoxOfficeGame.com . After a year in development, I'm quite proud with how it looks. While we have a good foundation, we're most excited for some of the things we're planning on rolling out over the next few months. Big things are coming! We have a long list of bells and whistles to improve quality of life and gameplay experience, and we'll soon create apps for the Apple and Android app stores. Longer term, we’re planning to introduce alternate game options and modes, including a global-league version of the game so individual players can join without needing to round up friends for a private league. We’re still at the beginning of this journey, but it’s been one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever worked on. The response from players has been incredibly moving, and we're really excited for what's ahead.

Fantasy Box Office Blog

The Fantasy Box Office 2026 Movie Analysis

How to Plan Your First Draft

Bending the Rules for Greta Gerwig's Narnia

Building a Better Bomb

Why Box Office?

FADE IN

Resources

Connect

Legal

FANTASY BOX OFFICE