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 2024, 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 2024 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!