Fantasy Box Office

In my junior year of college, a bunch of friends and I started a fantasy football league together. We've all had so much fun in this league that we've continued it every year since. The only downside to this league is that it excludes all of my friends who don't follow football on a level that allows them to compete in the league. This is why I was so excited when my favorite fantasy podcast started describing a game that would bring all the fantasy goodness to a more general audience. The game is called Fantasy Box Office.

The basic goal of Fantasy Box Office is to draft a list of 10 movies that will out earn all of your competitors lists in total box office earnings. Here are the official rules I've played around with and settled on after listening to some different ideas from the podcast:

1. Decide on the length of the season – I'm going to go with Independence Day (July 4) to Labor Day (September 5) since this time block holds a lot of great Summer releases. But you can shorten or extend the season to suit your needs.

2. Draft your roster – Use a site like comingsoon.net to help you create a list of 10 movies you think will make the most money during your season. To make things more interesting, you can enforce a rule excluding all sequels and prequels, eliminating easy choices like X-Men, Harry Potter, or Transformers.

3. Put your list in order – Put your list in order by what you think will be the biggest earners to the smallest earners. At the end of the season, you get a 5 Million Dollar bonus for any movie that you put in the correct order.

4. Track the results – Have the biggest geek of your group gather everyone's movie list and post them on the internet where everyone can see. Then once a week or so, use a site like boxofficemojo.com to track and update the box office earnings of everyone's list.

5. Crown the winner – At the end of your season, add up the total box office earnings of your list including any bonuses. The roster with the highest earnings is declared the winner!

So that's it for the basic “easy” version of the game. If you're a big movie buff, you can increase the difficulty by replacing your movie list with an auction style draft, or introducing additional point systems such as durability, and rankings. Rules for this style can be found here.