It’s a Wonka New Year in the MFL

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.

And we’re back. It’s 2024, an impish chocolatier continues to charm the box office, and we’re just over two months away from the Academy Awards. Put another way: It’s go time. MFL awards points will resume rolling in this weekend when Golden Globes are handed out on Sunday night. In the meantime, we have two weeks’ worth of holiday box office to recap plus some place-setting to do before the sprint to the Oscars stage.

Box Office: It’s Chocolate

There are probably a thousand ways that Timothée Chalamet is a lot like Grover Cleveland, but one is that he has now ruled for two nonconsecutive periods. (Just go with that analogy — it’s perfect). After ceding the Christmas weekend to Aquaman, Wonka returned to the top spot at the box office, climbing up to $133 million. Among the box-office players in the Fantasy League, this puts Wonka nearly ahead of Five Nights at Freddy’s, on pace to pass The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, and a boost or two away from challenging Taylor Swift herself.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom fell to second place and $76 million total, which is not good (it’s performing worse than The Flash) but not as bad as it could be (it’s performing better than The Marvels).

Elsewhere, Migration is continuing Illumination’s trend of making animated movies that are far more successful than you’d expect, pushing to $54 million by the end of its second weekend. The Color Purple, which topped the Christmas Day box office, has already slid backward to fourth place with only $44 million total. What this roller coaster of a box-office narrative does for its Oscar chances remains to be seen.

The romantic comedy Anyone But You ($24 million cumulative) and George Clooney’s The Boys in the Boat ($22 million) performed admirably, while The Iron Claw is quietly (perhaps too quietly considering it has been completely absent from the awards discussion) putting up some of the best indie numbers of the year at $16 million and counting. And finally, down toward the bottom of the list in limited release, American Fiction has crossed over $1 million.

Best Buys

Now that we’re in 2024, there will be no more big opening-weekend box-office point dumps. Movies will continue to accumulate ticket-revenue points for the duration of their theatrical runs, but those points will naturally dwindle. With that in mind, here’s a look at the current top-12 point-earning movies and how much box office has contributed to their success:

1. Killers of the Flower Moon: 432 points (87 from box office)
2. Barbie: 380 points (0)
3. Poor Things: 315 points (10)
3. Past Lives: 315 points (0)
5. Oppenheimer: 300 points (0)
6. Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour: 293 points (275)
6. The Holdovers: 293 points (18)
8. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes: 264 points (259)
9. Wonka: 258 points (233)
10. May December: 245 points (0)
11. Five Nights at Freddy’s: 237 points (237)
12. Maestro: 205 points (0)

Of the top 12, five films have been significantly boosted by their box-office results. (We’re counting Killers of the Flower Moon, since those 87 points are what has it ahead of Barbie.) Two of those five (Eras and Freddy’s) were bargain buys. Killers of the Flower Moon ran you $35, a steal given its performance so far. Wonka set you back $15, and The Hunger Games cost $10; there were a lot of $10 and $15 films that have fallen well short of these point totals, so if you drafted Wonka or The Hunger Games ahead of Saltburn or Wish or Ferrari or Nyad, pat yourself on the back.

Leaderboard

Barbie tingz and RobsFlicks — with their identical rosters — hold on to first place for another week. But just five points behind sits Cinemawithcj, riding a wave of Wonka points into third place. That twinky chocolatier also catapulted Itssss OPPPPPYYYY into fourth place with a roster (Barbie, Past Lives, Poor Things, Anatomy of a Fall, American Fiction, All of Us Strangers) that seems ready to take the next wave of awards by storm.

Meanwhile, Vulture’s own Rebecca Alter leads the staff mini-league with a team named after Wonka (Here we go, mama) that didn’t actually roster that film. Money where your mouth is, Rebecca, come on!

Over in the Podcaster league, Sean Clements from Subtitles On is in the lead, boasting a roster that not only benefited from Wonka points but also Boys in the Boat points. Every little bit of help from George Clooney counts!

You can see the full leaderboard here on the main MFL landing page.

Looking Ahead

Golden Globes, baby! How will the No Longer the Hollywood Foreign Press Even If It Includes Some of the Same People throw the Fantasy League for a loop this year??

Questions? Feedback? Can’t find your team or mini-league on the leaderboard? Drop us a line at moviesleague@vulture.com.