It's been a while since we mounted a TV WORTH WATCHING contest for readers, offering tacky prizes for a predictive puzzler. So here's a new one, and it's a two-parter: Guess the opening-weekend grosses for two movies based on TV fare -- MacGruber and Sex and the City 2 -- and, by so doing, predict which one will outdraw the other...
The rules are the same as for previous contests. You can enter only once. In the event two predictions are identical, the one received earliest will count, and others can resubmit an altered estimate until the contest deadline.
The winners are determined in tried and true Price Is Right fashion: The person who gets closest to the actual revised box-office tallies, without going over, is the winner. And, of course, the winners must be ranked correctly in the final order for their respective weekends. If MacGruber out-earns Sex 2, your prediction must reflect that.
A sample contest entry, for example, might read: 1) Sex & the City 2, $62 million; 2) MacGruber, $19 million.
Deadline for entries is noon ET Friday, May 21, giving readers a full day to hone their predictions.
Among the key factors:
MacGruber, which premieres Friday, May 21, will be up against, among other films, the premiere of Shrek Forever After, the fourth film in the nine-year, $1-billion movie franchise (and those are U.S. figures; worldwide, it doubles).
MacGruber is based on series of Saturday Night Live sketches in which Will Forte plays a MacGyver-type inventor whose neuroses and distractions result in his constantly being blown up while trying to invent a way to defuse an explosive device.
Sex and the City 2 will premiere on Thursday, May 27, giving it a four-day Memorial Day Weekend box-office total.
As the original Sex and the City movie approached theaters in 2008, I guessed $55 million for the opening weekend -- its actual opening-week tally.
Winners will be announced after the revised figures for Sex 2 are in, post-Memorial Day weekend. Ad to entice readers (but only a little), here are the prizes from which the winner can select, taken straight from my still-uncleaned office floor:
1) a Ghost Hunters plug-in night light
2) an Alice deck of giant playing cards, keyed to the recent Syfy miniseries reimagining of Alice in Wonderland
3) an Ultimate Fighting Championship small-scale UFC fingerless leather glove trinket
4) a bright red NBC News mini-note pad and matching attached mini-pen.
Winners will be announced, then contacted, and can select their prizes.
Guess away. Quickly, but only once. And please, if you like, add a sentence defending your guesses. If you think MacGruber will be a sleeper hit, for example, or that moviegoers will be tired of Sex, explain why.
Remember... the deadline is noon ET Friday, May 21. Have fun!