Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photo: Seacia Pavao/Focus Features
This is the latest edition of the Movies Fantasy League newsletter. The drafting window for this season has closed, but you can still sign up to get the newsletter, which provides a weekly recap of box-office performance, awards nominations, and critical chatter on all the buzziest movies.
This past weekend, audiences made Mean Girls: The Secret Musical happen, carrying it to $50 million at the box office. That’s great news for everybody who has spent the past month calling Reneé Rapp “Mother” but fully inconsequential for MFL players, who are left grasping for every remaining bit of dwindling box-office points from December releases. The best of those is still Wonka, which continues to draw crowds, with $6.4 million over the weekend, on its way to $200 million domestically (it’s up to $187 million). That total lands it at No. 8 on the 2023 box-office list, where it will likely remain — the only movie it could conceivably pass would be No. 7, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, at $214 million, which is a stretch. Wonka is also the only box-office-eligible film with the potential to finish in the MFL’s 2023 top ten.
The other movie in the weekend’s top five that retained a noteworthy audience is Anyone But You. The Glen Powell–Sydney Sweeney rom-com is up to $64 million domestically, which is a decent return on your $5 investment.
Notable in smaller numbers are some of the year’s most acclaimed indies, though not necessarily in the order you’d think. If I’d told you last summer that of these four movies — The Boy and the Heron, The Boys in the Boat, Ferrari, and The Holdovers — two would be tied at $43 million and two would be tied at $18 million, would you have guessed that it was the first two that crossed the $40 million mark? If you just said “yes,” you’re a liar.
And after a slow start, Poor Things is picking up the pace a bit. The Emma Stone–fronted romp is up to $20 million domestically off a $2 million weekend.
My apologies to … well, all Brits … for that.
Anyway, last week we got nominations for the BAFTA Awards, the final major precursor before the Oscar nods arrive tomorrow. Last year, the BAFTAs announced the presence of All Quiet on the Western Front as a significant contender we hadn’t really seen coming. There was nothing quite so dramatic this year, though certain omissions have heads shaking going into Tuesday morning.
Oppenheimer had an incredibly strong showing with 13 total nominations, including three acting nods plus Film, Director, and Screenplay and a lot of craft recognition. It’s easy to see Oppy getting a similar haul from the Academy.
With 190 points earned from the BAFTA nominations, Oppenheimer came away 50 points ahead of its closest competition, Poor Things, which grabbed 11 nominations and tallied 140 points. But as was the case with most of the major contenders, some big point hauls were coupled with conspicuous misses. In the case of Poor Things, those were director Yorgos Lanthimos and supporting actors Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe being left out.
Killers of the Flower Moon picked up nine total nominations (including Best Film) and 110 points but missed out on noms for Best Director (Martin Scorsese), Best Actress (Lily Gladstone), and Best Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio). Maestro (110 points) got nods for both its lead performers and Bradley Cooper in Best Director but no Best Film nomination. All of Us Strangers had its best showing of awards season with six nominations (100 points) and nods for supporting performers Claire Foy and Paul Mescal, yet Andrew Scott was curiously left off the list.
Faring better was The Holdovers (130 points), which scored in every major category (Film, Director, Actor, Supporting Actress) it was in the running for and even picked up a surprise nod for Dominic Sessa in Supporting Actor (watch out for him as a surprise Oscar nominee).
It was a legitimately rough day for movies like May December (zero nominations, and its Oscar prospects look increasingly limited) and Past Lives (three nominations for 50 points, though one was a surprise Best Actor nod for Teo Yoo). And it was a disappointing showing for Barbie (80 points), which was nominated for Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling’s performances but shut out of Best Film and Best Director.
In a major blow to the fun of awards season, the AARP Movies for Grownups Awards declared winners not in a televised ceremony but via a press release. Leave it to the organization with a strong grandparent contingent to send you a card.
Scorsese was the big M4Gs winner, taking Best Director and Best Movie for Grownups for Killers of the Flower Moon. Those prizes together totaled a tidy 30 points for the film. The only other movie to win more than one award was Nyad — which makes sense, considering it’s very much a movie about staying active after 60. Annette Bening and Jodie Foster won Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, respectively, earning the film a cool 20 points.
The same seven identical rosters remain at the top of the leaderboard, though the Oppenheimer teams are creeping closer. Still, shout-out to Pigeon Doctor, Bob II, and ThankThePig (all of whom are in the AllOfUsGarys mini-league); AtomicViolet and TellyHop (from the Little Goldies league); Dick Feynmans Bongoes (from the Blankies league), and Asteroid City Director of Sanitation (from the Asteroid City Council league).
Lurking just a few points behind is the impeccable Choriza May December, who’s hoping that the Hunger Games movie can pull a few Oscar nominations.
You can see the full leaderboard here on the main MFL landing page.
Oscar-nominations Tuesday! Everything will change! Buckle up.
Questions? Feedback? Can’t find your team or mini-league on the leaderboard? Drop us a line at moviesleague@vulture.com.