Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos Getty Images
We’re hard at work in the Movies Fantasy League lab engineering the game’s sixth season. Come fall, players will draft from the 2026 release calendar to build a team of eight movies that will accumulate points from awards, critical acclaim, and box-office successes. But before the season premieres, we’re serving up a little treat to whet your appetite: the Preseason Box Office Battle. Could you have predicted Backrooms and Obsession surprise-crowning their YouTube wunderkind directors Kings of the Box Office? Prove it!
To participate, you’ll predict the domestic opening-weekend grosses for a slate of summer movies. The three soothsayers whose guesses come closest to the actual results will be crowned with a Cinematrix hat, as modeled by Real Housewives of Atlanta peach turned friend-of Cynthia Bailey.
You can find the Box Office Battle in Vulture’s first-ever zine, a 16-page booklet packed with games, essays, and more, available at Vulture Festival at Tribeca Festival. The weekend includes a slate of conversations and events, including a discussion with Solange celebrating the tenth anniversary of A Seat at the Table. If you can’t snag a copy of the zine at John Early and Alison Roman’s cooking event, where they’ll be concocting a mystery dish, we’re bringing the battle online so everyone can play.
➼ Submit your guesses here by Thursday, June 18.
We’ll track the box-office returns throughout the summer and announce the winners the week of August 24. Now let’s get in game shape.
