Box Office Power Rankings

We’ll use this week’s Box Office Power Rankings – topped, for the fourth consecutive week, by The Bourne Identity – to illustrate how the formula works. To assist us: Mr. Bean, pictured to the right.

Jason Bourne is so mean. He’s spent two weeks atop our Box Office Power Rankings, and now he won’t give up his place for those nice boys from Superbad.

In the three months since we started the Box Office Power Rankings, we’ve had two perfect scores. Now we have three, but not in a good way.

The billions of you who neglected to bet against me when I claimed that The Simpsons Movie would spend a second week atop the Box Office Power Rankings look pretty foolish today. See what I did there? I was wrong wrong wrong in my prediction, and I made you the idiot.

I’m a big enough person to admit that I was wrong, particularly when I was wrong in such a public fashion. So: I was wrong. My prediction that The Simpsons Movie would tank was woefully off the mark, and two bottles of wine have been delivered to Mike, per our bet. I shan’t even mention the fact that Mike bought 5,632,229 tickets to The Simpsons Movie last weekend.

So Hairspray knocked the rat off its pedestal after three weeks at the top, ranking second or third in all four components of the Box Office Power Rankings to sneak past Pixar’s latest offering. But I’m more interested in The Simpsons Movie.

With no serious new-release competition, Harry Potter’s box office and generally positive reviews propelled it to second place in the rankings. Ratatouille, buoyed by stellar notices and continued strength at the box office, took the top spot for the third week in a row.

The rats still rule in Culture Snob’s Box Office Power Rankings, with the critical acclaim for Pixar’s and Disney’s Ratatouille easily overcoming the box-office power of (and surprisingly un-bad reviews for) Transformers. Michael Bay’s robot movie landed in third place, also behind Live Free or Die Hard.

We have our first perfect score in Culture Snob’s Box Office Power Rankings. Pixar’s and Disney’s Ratatouille (directed and co-written by Brad Bird) was certainly expected to top the rankings, but this is a bit of a surprise.
Why? Because to achieve the maximum score of 40, a movie needs to top the box office (in this case, over Live Free Or Die Hard); perform better per-screen than both its “big” competitors (Live Free Or Die Hard again) and limited-release prestige pictures (Sicko); and score better with critics than everything else in the box-office top ten (particularly Sicko and Knocked Up).
That’s a tall order, but the computer-animated rats were up to the task.
Continue reading for the full rankings and the methodology.

My predictive powers have again proved to be less than stellar. (Anxiety over imminent surgery is my excuse.)
Last week, I predicted that a steady Ocean’s Thirteen would displace Knocked Up at the top of Culture Snob’s Box Office Power Rankings.
Not only did that not happen, but 1408 – an adaptation of a Stephen King story – came out of nowhere to tie Knocked Up for the top spot in this week’s rankings. It placed second to Evan Almighty in box office and per-screen average and was shockingly well-received by critics.
I won’t get burned again. This weekend, I’m taking the easy money and saying that Pixar’s Ratatouille will top our rankings, barring stellar notices for Live Free or Die Hard. See how I hedged?
Continue reading for the full rankings and the methodology.