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!