Well, the summer movie season is over and it’s time to tally our final scores in the Third Annual Summer Movie Fantasy League.

Long story short: Kris destroyed me.

It was pretty anti-climactic, really: even after my early lead, Kris didn’t even wind up needing her final three movies to beat me in the domestic opening box-office department. Almost every single movie I picked, with the exception of Still Very Fast And Quite Furious, underperformed. After Earth was a financial and critical dud. White House Down didn’t deliver. None of the kid’s movies I picked came close to Monsters University and Despicable Me 2. And, while The Wolverine did pretty well, it fell far short of the predictions for its opening weekend. Kris outplayed me to the tune of almost $70 million, even though she picked a few duds herself.

Even worse: it looked like I had the lowest RT score portion of the summer locked up, but this morning I went back to check all the scores again, as they tend to fluctuate throughout the summer. My best-worst pick was Hammer of the Gods, which had scored a zero! Unfortunately, a couple late reviews were added, and two of them were positive, meaning the film now scores at a 30%. Not good, but still enough to bump my total up over Kris’s, meaning she has the lowest combined RT score, meaning she wins that contest too. DAMN.

Here’s a look at the final tallies:

That’s it until next summer… when I will have my revenge.

Hi! Kris and I are deep into our 3rd annual Summer Movie Fantasy League, so I thought it might be time for an update.

With each of us having had seven of ten movies released and tallied for their opening weekend domestic earnings, here’s how the picture looks:

I came out of the gate strong, with Fast & Furious 6 nabbing almost $100K, but it was all downhill from there. World War Z did pretty well, but my poor choices of After Earth, Epic, White House Down, and Turbo did me no favors. Meanwhile, Kris picked the single biggest film, Man of Steel, plus got the two biggest kiddie flicks, Monsters U and Despicable Me 2. With three movies left for each of us, things are looking grim for the former champion (me).

However! All is not lost. With a string of crap and duds hitting the theaters over the past few weeks, and The Wolverine basically opening without any competition, I could cut a hefty chunk out of Kris’ $96 million lead this weekend. Unfortunately, I doubt it’ll be enough to win. She still has Elysium, which 1) has been advertised like crazy, 2) looks like it might be good, and 3) MATT DAMON. I’m not sure how 2 Guns will do, but it’s got Denzel Washington and Marky Mark, so I assume it’ll have a healthy opening. I think I’m still gonna get beat, but maybe it’ll be close.

Meanwhile, our three film picks for lowest Rotten Tomato score was close for a while! The Purge and The Internship were both basically the same degree of stinky. Kris looked like she might have run away with it by picking Syrup, which had zero positive reviews for WEEKS, but suddenly a positive one appeared, knocking it up to 17%. I managed a 0% pick too, with Hammer of the Gods, but we’ll have to keep an eye on it in case some tool decides to like it enough to give it a decent review. R.I.P.D. was much-hated, but not as much-hated as the most-hated Grown Ups 2. As with Syrup, these scores tend to fluctuate a bit as late reviews come in throughout the summer, but right now, I think I’ve got this portion of the summer league won.

It’s summer! There are movies! My wife and I are bored! That means it must be time for the Third Annual Livingston Summer Movie Fantasy League! Each summer, Kris and I each choose the ten summer movies we think will have the best domestic opening weekend earnings, and see who combines for the highest total. We also each pick three films we think will combine for the lowest Rotten Tomatoes review score.

I never posted the results from last year’s SMFL, because after that psychopath killed twelve people at The Dark Knight Rises premiere in Aurora, Colorado, writing about box office totals just seemed completely inappropriate (particularly since we have family in Aurora). Still, you can see the final totals here, as well as the RT score.

Anyway, we’re back for a third go-round! We started with Memorial Day weekend this year, meaning we missed out on Iron Man 3 and the new Star Trek, but here’s a look at our 2013 picks, in release date order:

I think my biggest mistake was picking After Earth (which is getting horrible reviews) in the third round, which left the door open for Kris to grab Pacific Rim. I also somehow let Kris snag the two kids movies that will be both good and make money (Monsters University and Despicable Me 2) while I wound up with four that open later in the summer and will probably all stink. So, I’m not too hopeful at my chances of a three-peat this year, though Fast and Furious 6’s big opening weekend gave me a great start.

Anyway, I’ll post some updates at the summer progresses, and Kris is going to be writing about it this year too:

Kris here: I’ve lost two years out of two. Not spectacular. Last year, I passed on the Avengers and went with the Dark Knight as my first pick. Many of the people I love live in Aurora (or A-town as my brother calls it), and my niece’s husband is a huge Batman fan. I checked with my brother, and was very relieved to hear that my family was okay.  After the shootings, we didn’t really have much fun with the league. The trash talking didn’t feel right.

This year will be different. A few days before our draft, I was stuck in the jury duty waiting room. I had eight hours to do my homework thanks to the free wifi. I mapped out the possibilities, and think I did pretty well this time. I picked a lot of late summer movies again. Not sure how that keeps happening. At the moment, I’ve got two more weeks before I can even get a single dollar on the board. Some thoughts on my picks (in order):

“Man of Steel” – Most of the trailers have been pretty dull for this one. Plus, another superhero movie to start didn’t seem like the way to go. That is, until I finally saw an awesome trailer for this movie the night before the draft that made picking it seem like a no-brainer. Michael Shannon as General Zod in a voice-over, demanding Superman to come forward. They never show that one. Why do they never show that one? Seriously, they need to get on that.

“Despicable Me 2” – To be honest, I never saw part one. I don’t even know what those little yellow things are, but they seem irritating. Learning from the past: what is irritating to me, is box office gold. Plus, it’s due out over the 4th of July weekend.

“Monsters University” – I saw a bit of the first movie, and it was a cute and sentimental. I like cute and sentimental, plus Disney/Pixar will surely market the heck out of this one. Try to avoid this one! I dare you!

“Pacific Rim” – I was on the fence on this one. I wanted to go with “Fast and Furious 6” – I really did. It hadn’t been picked as yet, and I knew people were going to go see the hell out of it. However, Pacific Rim has giant robots, it’s coming out in IMAX, will involve cities getting smashed up, has that “WHOOOOOMP” noise in the trailer that everyone loves, is directed by Guillermo del Toro, and did I mention GIANT ROBOTS?

“The Heat” – Had to toss in an “R” rated movie, because adults see movies too. Melissa McCarthy and Paul Feig are back together, and Sandra Bullock is back on screen. I’m rooting for this one.

“Elysium” – I loved, loved, loved “District 9”, and this one seems like that movie on steroids. Plus, Matt Damon is part machine. I recently watched “Behind the Candelabra”, and if Mr. Damon plays this one half as earnestly as he played Scott Thorson, we’re all in for a treat. I’m thinking he won’t be wearing any glittery speedos in this one, but he’ll likely smash a guy through a wall while wearing high-tech body armor. I’m in!

“World’s End” – Likely that this one won’t make too much money. However, my favorite movie of all time is “Shaun of the Dead” and I had to show it some faith and love. It’s really the only movie I’m excited to see this summer. Hopefully, I’m not alone in that.

“Lone Ranger” – At this point in the draft, the pickings were getting slim. I really don’t know about this one. It kept showing up on the Summer duds list, and it’s a western. I’m not nuts about westerns, myself. Think I may have thrown a wild pitch here, kids.

“2 Guns” – Sometimes, when you start throwing wild… you can’t stop. However, ladies (and quite a few dudes) seem to love Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington, and dudes (and quite a few ladies) seem to love guns. Let’s hope these hold true. It’s not due out until August. Perhaps it will be very hot out in August, and people will want to sit in an air conditioned movie theater?

“This is the End” – Pretty much ended the game with a balk. I know it, you know it.

For worst Rotten Tomatoes score, I went with “R.I.P.D”, “The Purge” and “Syrup”. All based on trailers alone. Couldn’t even get through the trailer for the Syrup movie.

Well, this is a first for our Summer Movie Fantasy League, though since it’s only the second summer we’ve done it, firsts are not terribly unexpected.

Kris and I each chose ten summer movies we thought would have the highest combined domestic opening weekend box office totals, and we also chose three movies we thought would combine for the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score. While the box office results aren’t yet complete (I still have three movies left to open, and Kris has five, including The Dark Knight Rises), all of our low score films have been released. The results are: a tie.

Granted, RT scores tend to drop or rise a couple points every now and then as late reviews are added: the Madea movie has been slowly bleeding points for the past two weeks, Rock of Ages dribbled a little lower since I last checked, and Abraham Lincoln went up a point. So, I’ll have to recheck the results toward the end of the summer to see if there have been any changes. If we’re still tied, I think we can declare Kris the winner of this portion of the SMFL, as her choice of Piranha 3DD was the single lowest scored movies of all the stinkburgers we picked.

In terms of box office totals, I’m still way out in front, though that is going to change this weekend when The Dark Knight finally Rises. If it comes close to The Avengers opening weekend, we could have a pretty tight race leading to the end of the summer. Kris still has Total Recall and The Bourne Movie Without Bourne In It, and I’ve got high hopes for the fourth Ice Age movie. And we each have a couple lame duck picks that could surprise or disappoint (her dark horse Magic Mike did a highly respectable $39 million, while my seemingly ironclad Battleship barely cracked $25 million).

Here’s where we stand going into July:

If you recall, last year my wife Kris and I engaged in a summer movie fantasy league (we got the idea from Film Drunk), where we held a draft and picked summer movies based on what we thought their opening weekend totals would be. I won, but not by much.

We’re now in the midst of our Second Annual Summer Movie Fantasy League, and I’m long overdue for boring you with the details.

Back in April, we each picked ten movies we thought would have big summer opening weekends (May through August) and here they are (in release date order, not in the order we picked them). Right now, I’m way in the lead, but only because six of my movie picks have already been released, as opposed to only two of hers.

As you can see, we each have a couple of guaranteed mega-hits (she picked The Dark Knight as her first pick, and I went with The Avengers), and we each have a couple of highly questionable selections (I expected What to Expect When You’re Expecting to exceed expectations, and I was horribly wrong, and she figured Magic Mike, a movie about Channing Tatum taking off his clothes, would draw a ton of squealing ladies to the theaters, which remains to be seen.) Not to mention, my terrible choice of Rock of Ages, which despite being stuffed with stars in a Glee-obsessed country, opened this past weekend to a paltry estimated sum of $15 million.

Still, if The Dark Knight has a comparable opening to The Avengers, which I’m sure it will, I’m not really doing so hot. If you take Madagascar 3 and Men In Black 3 out of my totals, I’ve got three films that combine to the same total of her second pick, Prometheus. So, while I’m currently way in the lead, I’m also sort of only barely in the lead.

We also each picked three summer movies we thought would combine for the lowest total Rotten Tomatoes score.

We were both surprised Adam Sandler’s That’s My Boy even registered on RT, and Rock of Ages wasn’t quite the critical poo-fest Kris expected, but she has a very respectable total of 77% (last year, the lowest combined total was 95%). That means both Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Madea Makes Another Shitty Movie can only combine for 54% for me to win. I’m pretty sure Tyler Perry won’t disappoint me, but I have absolutely no idea how Abraham Lincoln will be received.

That’s where we stand right now! Kris has three movies opening in the next couple weeks, and of course Batman is lurking over the whole thing like, well, Batman lurking over something. I think the rebooted Spider-Man will have a big holiday weekend in July, and we all know Brave will be massive. I think this could still spin out either way. I’ll update the league every time we’ve got some new numbers to look at.