Play The Box Office Game That Has Slowed The /Film Team's Productivity To A Crawl
Just when you thought your social media timeline was already too flooded with the results of Wordle, Quordle, Octordle, Lewdle, Heardle, (these are all real, FYI) and all of the other emoji-based scoring shared daily games, film fans are here to be just as insufferable thanks to the Box Office Game. Based on an idea from the cinephiles behind the popular Blank Check with Griffin and David movie podcast, the Box Office Game is about to become your latest daily addiction, and finally allow the resident Human IMDb in every friend group their chance to shine.
Similar to Wordle, the Box Office Game is browser-based and everyone gets the same puzzle every day. Rather than trying to figure out a five letter word, you're tasked with remembering the top 5 films at the box office for a specific weekend in time. The only information available to get you started are the name of the studio that put the film out and the film's total gross at that date. If this sounds impossibly hard even with those details, don't worry, you are also able to gets hints, such as the director, an actor, tagline, plot, genre, budget, and final worldwide gross. The hints are weighted though, so asking for a plot hint will cost you more points than asking for a genre. Each film is worth 200 points total, and similarly to how Wordle will display your accuracy patterns, the Box Office Game will show which films you needed hints on, and which ones you knew thanks to years of reading Box Office Mojo like a Midwest dad memorizing sports statistics.
Good news, I'm addicted
Today's puzzle focused on the weekend of May 24, 2002, and y'all, I crushed it. Check out my sick Box Office Score below, and quake with fear at my unbelievable skills.
boxofficega.me
May 24, 2002
✅ 200
✅ 200
✅ 150
✅ 200
✅ 130
➕ 200
🏆 1080
"I don't believe you," I can hear you crying. "There's no way you knew the Box Office statistics for this random weekend 20 years ago!" Well, this specific weekend just so happened to be my 12th birthday, and I celebrated by having an all day movie marathon at the mall with my friends. There were tireless debates over whether or not we were going to see [REDACTED] again despite all of us having seen it opening weekend, or if we really were going to watch [REDACTED] because one of our friends really, really wanted to see the new DreamWorks picture the rest of our petty pre-teen selves thought looked "lame." The sunbleached movie posters from this weekend are burned into the back of my skull ...and this is how they get you.
The monsters at Blank Check have given me a taste of ecstasy by allowing me this incredibly high-scoring result, and now I'm going to be chasing that high every day until my eyeballs roll out of my face. I peaked too soon, and now each game is going to remind me that just like being in gifted classes as a child, all that remains now is disappointment and wasted potential. Doesn't matter, though. I'm still going to play every day trying to reach the elusive perfect score. They've got me hooked, and there's no going back.