Free to play for anyone with a Box Office Watch account. Each week you rank the five films you think will finish highest at the domestic box office and predict what each will take over the Friday–Sunday frame. You are scored out of 100. There are no prizes, no entry fee, and nothing to buy.
A board opens each Tuesday evening, once Monday’s actuals are in, with that weekend’s field — the wide releases opening Friday plus the holdovers still in contention. Choose five films from the field and place them in the order you expect them to finish, then predict each one’s three-day gross.
All five picks are required to enter. A board with four films filled in, or with a film but no gross, is not a short entry — it is no entry, and it scores nothing. Fill every slot and give every film a number.
You can change your picks as often as you like until the deadline. Entries lock Thursday at 11:59 PM Eastern. The deadline is enforced by our servers, not by your browser, so a clock set wrong on your end changes nothing.
A complete board is entered whether or not you lock it. If all five slots hold a film and a gross when the deadline passes, we lock it for you at 11:59 PM Eastern and score it. This does not soften the rule above — an incomplete board still enters nothing, and no amount of waiting will complete it for you.
Locking it yourself is still worth doing. A board locked automatically is recorded at the deadline itself, which is the latest time any entry can hold, so it loses every tie against a player who committed earlier. It also does not apply to a board you locked and then unlocked — see the next paragraph.
Your last locked board is the one that counts. You can unlock a locked board to edit it right up to the deadline, but if you unlock and never lock again, we score the board exactly as it stood when you last locked it. Nothing you leave half-finished can lose you an entry you had already made — and equally, edits you never lock in are not part of it.
Until the lock passes, nobody can see anyone else’s picks — not other players, and not through the site’s public data interface. After the lock, all entries for that week become visible.
Every week is scored out of 100: fifty points for the order, fifty for the grosses.
Scored on how far your prediction lands from the film’s actual three-day gross, as a percentage of that gross.
| How far off | Points |
|---|---|
| Within 5% | 10 — a bullseye |
| Over 5%, up to 10% | 8 |
| Over 10%, up to 15% | 6 |
| Over 15%, up to 20% | 4 |
| Over 20%, up to 30% | 2 |
| More than 30% | 1 |
Level scores are separated by who locked first. The earliest locked entry takes the higher position. Unlocking and re-locking resets your lock time to the moment you re-locked, so an edit on Thursday afternoon costs you the tiebreak against someone who committed on Tuesday. A board locked automatically at the deadline is recorded at 11:59 PM Eastern, so it sits behind every entry that locked itself. If two entries locked in the same second, they share the position.
Every board is a three-day Friday–Sunday call, including over holiday weekends, unless the board itself says otherwise. Where a four-day frame applies, it will be stated on that week’s board before it opens.
Each week’s field is last weekend’s top ten, every new wide release, and any film moving into wide release — usually around fifteen films. It is set on Tuesday, before the board opens, and does not change once the week is running. If you think something outside the field will crack the top five, the search box on the board reaches every film in release.
Scores appear Sunday, when we publish the weekend estimates — usually around 12:00 PM ET. Those are preliminary. Final scores publish Monday from actual figures, and those are the ones that count: a film’s Sunday estimate and Monday actual routinely differ enough to move positions. Only final scores feed the all-time standings.
You’ll appear on the leaderboard and get an achievement on your profile.
We may remove entries or accounts for multiple accounts, automated entry, or attempts to interfere with other players’ entries or with scoring. We may also correct a score if we published it wrong — we would rather be right late than wrong permanently.
These rules can change between weeks, never during one. Any change takes effect from the next board that opens, not the one you have already entered.
Playing needs an account, so the Privacy Policy covers it. The short version: until the lock, nobody sees your picks. After it, your picks, scores and rank are public and attached to your username — that is what a leaderboard is. Delete your account and every entry goes with it.
Ask via the contact page.